DC translates/traduz Matilde Campilho

LATE AFTERNOON CHAT

AFTER THREE YEARS WEEKS

IN EXILE

The waiters piling up the chairs

you looking at me and begging that I say

something Please Say Something Don’t Just Write

I’m avoiding the ticking of the clock that already

announce the already famous escaping

of our bodies each towards

opposite ends of the city – if our love were

a gun I’d be the grip and you the sight

like teacher Sofia Jones used to say

it is a terrible thing that two parallel lines never cross

paths they only meet in the infinite but the truth

is that the question of the infinite never really interested us but

the rest of mathematics sure did of course and in fact

I prefer a thousand times over your cup of tea cooling off

as you talk about square roots

as you talk about figs’ thieves

as you talk about the whale’s stumble

suddenly I don’t even know what it is that

you’re talking about

because the way your incisor tooth

cuts through and upholds all the beauty

in the café makes me understand once again

that the seventh day marks the cuckoo’s hour

and the cuckoo’s song and thus I hop on my bike

and as usual you sketch my portrait with my hair drawn

by the wind with this quality of a boy who’s always leaving

at the same time and that tomorrow if all goes well

he’ll be back at the same time to the same love the same table

the same explosion

indeed with the same escape

because you and I we are constituted

of the same slippery matter, i.e., butter,

olive oil, jam and awe.

Matilde Campilho

título original: CONVERSA DE FIM DE TARDE DEPOIS DE TRÊS ANOS NO EXÍLIO