This week I wanted to share the remainder of the poems I wrote during a recent visit to Portugal. If you didn’t yet read my piece from last week, you can find it here. It makes a nice companion piece to this week’s newsletter.
Little Gold Cherubim
A white ceiling with little gold cherubim. Smell of piss & MTV. An Arcadian mosaic lining one wall — maidens frolicking at the beach beneath striped umbrella or else they are gathering flowers & garlands before a gate. I kept looking at the picture but I couldn't tell if the gate was locked. --- You order coffee & I order beer. There aren't many of these places left in the city, you tell me. Perhaps this is one of the last. We sat and ate in silence. It was hot, our clothes worked uncomfortably against us. I notice even the ice in our glasses starting to shine, as if it had something that it wanted to share.
A note on the final stanza of this poem: this was modified from the original postcard (see image above); there, the final stanza was “How much did we both wish / we could crawl inside that mosaic / & become another one of those painted girls?”. But I wanted to give the poem more of a throat to speak with than that ending would have allowed; hence the modification here.
For Isaac
My baby brother My half-moon My honey lung — how are you doing? Do you hear me between the cracks in my words or do they cling against the page? Reluctant brothers... Isaac, Portugal is a country of beautiful pavements Pedro told me this when we first met pavements with patterns as clear & inaccessible as tattoos Now I am telling you This is a poor country In Portugal the streets are not paved with gold Most of the people I see out and about are old But the pavements are new & beautifully ornamented There are fish & rivers Fountains & forests Today I saw a mosaic of a cog with wings I see men repairing the pavements They move the stones as if they were objects of immensely precious value And fragile As careful as if they were performing archaeology, or deciphering an ancient language The pavements are Portugal's own Nazca lines And our feet are the voices of a people who have been quiet for a very long time.
This second poem differs quite a lot from the postcard original. As above, I found upon a second reading that the voice of the poem wanted something more — there was more to be said, and it had more to say. I’m not entirely convinced that it “works” in the edited version either; but I am happier with it than I was with the original, and I felt there was something honest enough about it that made it worthwhile to share here.