To José Guimarães de Araújo
Within the loss of memory
a blue woman reclined
hiding in her arms one
of those cold birds
that the moon floats late at night
on the naked shoulders of the portrait.
And from the portrait two flowers grew
(two eyes two breasts two clarinets)
that at certain hours of the day
grew prodigiously
so that the bicycles of my desperation
might run over her hair.
And on the bicycles that were poems
my hallucinated friends arrived.
Seated in apparent disorder
swallowing their watches with regularity
while the hierophant armed as horseman
uselessly moved his lone arm.
Translated by Djelal Kadir