808 | THE JOB

    Painting by Luis Pla

The Job

I write to feel in my veins

the flight of the stone.

The anticipation of peace

in this country of grenades
moulded

in the silence of fruit.

I write like someone who digs

in the center of the shadow

a sea of clarity.

Living stones of possibility,
the words raise
the crime, the swamp birds.

I write
in the great dark space

that we are and inundates us.

Casimiro de Brito, Portugal 1938–2024

from “Jardins de Guerra”, Portugália Editora

Translation Germain Droogenbroodt – Stanley Barkan