The loneliness of the afternoon sets out what Lisbon
carries in its encamped promontory:
half faces in cadenzas of backlighting
awnings axing sunlight on the esplanades,
piled up walls, windows and ironwork
spilling down to the Tagus
where the city’s voices drown.
Will it be worth the physical roar of this silence?
The shadows that defeat what we’ve just
told ourselves, and ease this closeness
while the light dresses up for leaving us?
On the city’s side, houses, streets, the river.
On our side, what we feel, voiceless, restless,
will build the deafness of what is left to us,
and even more, deadly, a tautology.