Three Poems by Salgado Maranhão
Islander
the word that is a stone in flight.
I listen to the sea singing your Azores,
an ax splitting open silence.
I, too, am that stone that sings:
a bird stitched to the Atlantic.
Oh Islander of Lusitanian seas,
that gave me a tongue with the salt
of their words; between the howling of the sea and the unfathomable wind:
the poet is always an island of stars!
who pray to the stomach
without metaphysics. Of those who
drown their sufferings
I am a creature of speech
bearing bones
from behind the shadows,