The Tuner of Silences

past was an illness and memories a punishment.

Terror at loving you in such a fragile place as the world.

Woe at loving you in this imperfect place

Where everything leaves us broken and silent

Where everything deceives and divides us.

Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen

Standing there, I faced the road as if it were cutting me in half as it passed under the vehicle, separating joy from sadness.

Mine was a strange appetite: for the first time, it wasn’t enough for me to see the world. Now, I wanted to see the way I looked at the world.

When we are children, we never take our leave of places. We always think we’ll be back. We never believe it’s the last time.

father says that in the city, people gave the stars names. And they did so because they were afraid . . .

—Afraid?

—Afraid because they felt the sky might not belong to them.

That’s what makes a place: entering and leaving. That’s why we didn’t live anywhere at all.

I breathe slowly for fear of disturbing constellations.

A poet grows when faced by absence, as if absence were his altar, and he became greater than the word.

The body wasn’t embracing the ground like local corpses do.