Rooms

a few months have gone by since I learned your face by heart
a few days have passed since I knew your name,
a few hours have gone by since i left your room.
from my room to yours time is a sombre passageway
floating on the edges of images.
i find myself lying on the soft robes of expectation, i find the meanderings
of a fetid academicism
a soft roaring robe that devours my waiting, that burns through my waiting,
though i wait for nothing, in particular, except perhaps
more waiting.
arteries weakened by the years run through me.
the skin of fear slides with me across the room
or is it my ideas being flooded by the sampness of thesed cracked walls?
in my voice i sense the burden of the furniture and the burden of all 
the fingerprints of all the other students who, like me, have used it.
in my mouth, i taste the salty memory of you, or the salty memory
of what i think you are,
of what i’d like you to be,
of wthat i’d like me to be together with what i’d like you to be.
fear is stifling age, delight in pessimism is perched on the chest of drawers
and some minutes have elapsed since I started hating you.

© Translated by Ana Hudson, 2013

First Published on Poems From the Portuguese