Halved mountains,
halved rivers
and even death is
shared.
The midday splits
man from side to side
and splits his rest,
splits the shade in two
and doubles the burning heat.
Do you know where
are you going?
Do you know
what country is yours,
so fragrant,
with a line of parched miseries,
a poor bark
trickling down
the lost rivers
under the quiet brambles?
The traveler used to sing,
but now hear
how silent he stays
at the edge of disaster.
Look for his voice among
the funeral waste,
look among the suburban
garbage dump
the piece of hope
transformed into
the opaque crystal of the bottles.
Look for his illusion
in the amber of rum spit
at the edge of death
between two enemy lands,
on the maternal river,
river of mourning
in which two strokes don’t fit.
Listen to the traveler rest,
asking for clemency
under the trees.
Listen to the poor poet
a whole heart
—so whole—
singing among
the wounds
without understanding
the mark of the earth
without tasting its divided fruit.
II
Do you know, brother, where
this route full of paralytic
guards take us?
Come in now
holding your guide’s hand.
Look at the dry, silent paradise
and come in
and look
and feel
the sun’s morning
on your back
the rifle against the sun,
against the stone,
death facing the sun,
the sun full of shadow
and misery.
Climb to the stones’ seat of honor,
to the cold moon of yesterday
when you laughed
holding Eve by her arm
asking for the deer
for the light
and the leaf just turned green
when your bed was liberty,
the rumor of the waves
against your hardened feet
feet of a blessed man
and your love the red lighthouse
the window facing the abyss
where the gulls’ flapping alighted.
Come into your kingdom, Adam
and look at the sacred tree
surrounded by mines,
by barbed wire.
This is what’s left and,
as with any inheritance,
it is not much.
Look at your paradise
between two fires
elastic serpents’ lair
and the men that have
forgotten
their attributes
their lovers
their pure descendants,
to point to the horizon.
III
Halved mountains,
halved rivers,
the halved death stuck
down the throat
like a dry sun.
Try to sleep now,
try to give
the only eyelid
to your unfinished dream.
Try to sleep.
Let us try to sleep
until we are awakened
by robust loggers,
men of shovels and songs
that would change the course
of our sorrowful
beloved island,
of our unhinged planet.
And like that, singing
just like that
halfway down the road of return
without finding the promised homeland.
