You touched
the bedroom door
with brown-eyed step
with the noise of light eyes.
Stealthy and penetrating
the smooth body of death
opened its channels.
Its ballads, its thick liquids
and whitish.
Its cradle today, its crucible
its farewell.
You touched, Nick, Joey
the always other
your stale bread, your dark crumb.
That is shadow and that is back
that is mirror another in desire
that is hunger and sleep, spasm
and when it lives it dies and it dies when it lives.
You touched
the body so many times
collapsed in an angeless afternoon
the body the undressed the unclothed
in a passing hotel
the detainee
the one who does not stop passing
in the burned pastures
of erected marbles
and black waters
transparent in your mouth
in your desire.
You touched
your voice when it changed
your changes of silences
your silent childhood
only dried fruits, only crusts
of bread
pillows only
just for luxe a flannel
and a white waterfall in your throat
to hide the moaning.
I don’t know
if I am my body
or some other
I do not know if I have
the counted music of my days
and if at dawn I will come back
with empty love.
This eagerness to look is more than mine.
I do not know if I have
within my forgotten books
animals, unusual insects
whose little dust
I breathe at mornings’
rave.
This eagerness to look is more than mine.
Virgil’s shepherds
they are Virgil
Poussin’s shepherds
Poussin the satyr
his erect member
they are Claudio and his shepherds
of neglected love
what flutters
in the sails of the ships
of my absence
fulfilled.
This eagerness to look is more than mine.
How many nights
you have slept
how many dreams
in dream
your body
brown or blank
has rested
in another body
on other stones
like your merry armor
that does not hurt
nor are they pastures
of ants, diurnal animals
ungraspable.
I see between sleeves
bluish
close to the tree
testicular of hoarse gender
the rush of your hand
lilting
that trembles with the day
as if
the last heat
on this earth.
Close to the port
always fired
aimlessly
at least I will touch
your burning belly
and I will leave the water
that springs from my mouth
in the mornings.
Translated by Cláudio Willer
From Balada de Joey Stefano. Selection in La mano segadora, selección antológica (1983-2021), Fundación La Poeteca, Caracas, 2022,
An artist book conceived in collaboration with Matheus Chiaratti, Quadra and Ikrek Edições, São Paulo, 2023.
