IN JANUARY

Shadows Playing. A morning at Orsay Museum,Paris. May,2005.
Photography by Isaac Pereira.

To my mother...

IN JANUARY

In January, cats stand still in the sun
Between the ruins of abandoned houses.
Cold goes through the nostrils
And comes out from the mouth in fumes of surprise.

It is the time and latitude of sweet sleep and vegetal
Of childish trees of imagination, of the blue, lilies and pink hydrangeas ….
And there are buds in seedbeds without name,
Nest dug in the interior of the moss, in the uterus of the earth.
Certain that they will be red until death,
will be one day, to awake vernal of hands, of fingers,
of our cold and worm hands like lips of blue fire.

Return to the old house
Attached to the granite rain,
To a gale of naked tree.
In the streets where the margins are current of rivers,
The gutters are cataracts,
The estuary where hides the weight of the world.
The unknown nightmares.

But today You believe. Today I had a dream. A dream like everyone.
It was an oriental flower market.
I greeted the sellers that I acquainted in days that were not dreams.
The stalls were yellow, were white.
Oh I may have found you, maybe lost in those petals.
Leaving a dream to a cold reality.
In January, cats wonder like men in abandoned city,
Invisible, giving up underneath the viaducts
Without words, making fire, cold, do not dance.
As if they snarl softly.

In January, I am not yet tired,
Extend my legs in hot water of the night
And, like a distant grumble, hearing you sing:

DOBA, DOBA, DOBADOIRA…*

I do not fall asleep alone.

* Portuguese folk song.