How to Speak of Silence?

by Natália Correia

How can silence be spoken?
If in the foliage of a poem
you gather anacolutha from me,
the fraud is yours. The gem
does not descend to prostituted sounds.

The psaltery, dilettante,
wounds the Muse with a jasmine?
Only from that moment on
does the search come to an end.

The sealed door opened,
I am thought, I no longer think.
If the Muse remains silent,
how can silence be spoken?

To cast pearls before swine?
I do not burn within the parable.
Into hands that play with fire
I do not place the sword.

From the confines, the peristyle
I silence with tips of fire,
and from that chaste secrecy
verses are merely release.

And also, so they may remember me,
I leave them in the black market,
for in them glories are sold
and I am not only detachment.

Root of God between the teeth—
there, transmission stops.
Ultrasounds from those springs
only birds will understand.