The theologians all err
when they describe God in their treatises.
You sharpen me until
I could have made that irreparable cut.
God will be born again to rescue me.
Kill me, Jonathan, with your knife.
Free me from the captivity of time.
I want to understand your nails;
the plan is not fixed, your face disappears.
I love time because I love this hell,
this excruciating love that needs the body,
that needs God’s protection to say
on this pedestrian-infested afternoon:
To have a body is the way to make poems,
to step on the margins of the abyss.
I love you.
Your watch,
incongruous as my shoes,
a joyful cross from Adam’s happy fall.

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Translated from the Portuguese by Jessica Goudeau