Poetryzine Magazine presents the selected poems by the Portuguese poetess Isilda Nunes
Illustration: AI
BEYOND THE WINDOW
THERE IS THE NIGHT
Beyond the window there is the night. The light of the moon.
The interrupted silence. Torn from time to time.
Outside, the river carries utopia
on the barge of memories.
Perhaps the wind will change direction.
Here,
Only spectres.
Shadows. Ashes. Scraps of us.
Words born. In pain.
Beyond the window there is the night. The light of the moon.
Dewdrops. The poem’s lap.
A POET LIVES IN MY ATTIC
A poet lives in my attic,
guardian of the stories of the world.
The roof of my attic is the Cosmos,
where suns reside like lamps.
It rains words
on my attic.
So often dyslexic.
Grizzled. Soiled.
Others framed in rainbows.
The poet catches them.
Strokes them.
Constructs the poem,
crosses the skies,
lights the moon
and offers it to Xerazade.
PLEASE
Please,
Don’t invite me to travel on rough seas,
Even though I long for adventure!
Don’t invite me to drink this elixir,
Even if my insides crackle with dryness!
Don’t invite me to dream of the infinite,
Even if all of me is illusion!
Let me only sip the blissful peace,
Feel God in the breeze that passes through me,
And spread out on the shores of my silence!
WHERE DOES THE HOLY GRAIL RESIDE?
WHERE DOES THE ELIXIR OF TRUTH HOVER?
I hurry up
Jacob’s Ladder,
in an effervescent yearning to reach
the North, in the bewilderment that invades me.
Babel lies in a brownish den.
Inversion of principles.
A swamp of injustice.
I’m a centaur who dreams
to transmute.
To fly beyond common walkways.
From the Cosmic Library,
to drink ancient philosophies
and cocktails of wisdom.
To become Divine.
Like an eagle travelling through time
And, in one swoop of the wing, cross the skies,
In glimpses of Devir.
THE END OF THE LINE
The shore overflows the silence of the season of uncertainty.
There is no more Persephone's abduction or Psyche's enchantment.
There are no birds to draw the sky,
nor torches to light the night.
There is no passion, no whisper or ardour.
Your hand, barren of us, beckons fate.
Desire knitted in silken sheets,
fades in the farewell suspended from your lips.
The crows augur frost
in the line of time.
I saw no more the saltpans of your eyes,
nor the sea of your lap.
The sonata in Adagio Sostenutto
agonises in pas de deux.
In lapidated absence,
the vacant gaze
dictates the verdict.
The swan succumbs on the stage.
Comments