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A thousand demented drawings
tattoo your skin. A thousand shapes
form you, deform you and
mold you. I hold you and feel
the melding of our shapes.
I sip the moment of our
impossible union and withdraw
with my body marked, forever,
by yours.
If I could, I would climb to
the highest of your ramifications,
choose the warmest of your branches,
and there build a nest
for my desires. Then,
one by one, I would string the
songs the wind sings in
your leaves, braid in
the laughter of the birds and allow myself
to dream but a second. If I could ...
Your body, exhaling the scent of earth,
holds back my steps. What could
have made that branch grow
so straight towards the spring, and
that other one describe
so many and so capricious curves?
What could have made your trunk
so tender to the touch and smooth
to sit on? I resume my steps slowly,
but, a little further, stop and look
again; what could have detained me,
impelled me to touch you and
... write these things?
Your charts (wonderful
imperfections), etched
haphazardly on your body, are
lanes where the canoes of my
imagination navigate.
If on some days, passing
indifferently, I do not notice them,
it does not mean I am alienated
from you. It means (horrible
confession) that I am alienated
from myself.
The wind whistles in your old
branches strange songs.
Yesterday you were almost nothing
and today you are almost nothing.
Between the roots, at your feet,
seeds that will give rise to
your rebirth in other beings,
remind me that my words,
on paper, whenever they are read,
will also be the agents of my
rebirth. For an instant, I imagine
"eternity" to be but that.
The thorns which
protect you, do not let me
touch you. I look at you and feel
the prickly armor with
which I adorn myself and that
"protect" me, isolating me
from my surroundings.
Again I look at you and
ask myself: Why?
I feel as if it were on mine,
my sister, the wound they
laid on your breast. Later,
at daybreak, I'll return.
I know I won't be able
to cure your suffering, but
I promise to pick some of
your fruits and take them to
lands where the only known
weapons are the twinkling
of sunbeams, at dawn, and
the roaring of the children's
laughter, when the day is done.
I observe the harmony with which
your trunk sustains its branches.
Scratching you ever so lightly,
I inhale the sap of your entrails.
I feel inebriated. Your body
awakens in me unsuspected
sensuality’s.
A stranger walks
by. Solemn, I step back and
examine you with a calculated
cataloguing pose. Did he ...
notice? I take leave. bidding you
good-bye with a sideways look.
Pedro Veludo
