THE ACACIA TREES [I]
You used to be able to drive (though I don’t) across
the wide, pool-sheeted pasture below the house
to the hot, empty beach and park in the starved shade
of the acacias that print those tiny yellow flowers
(blank, printless beaches are part of my trade);
then there were men with tapes and theodolites who measured
the wild, uneven ground. I watched the doomed acres
where yet another luxury hotel will be built
with ordinary people fenced out. The new makers
of our history profit without guilt
and are, in fact, prophets of a policy
that will make the island a mall, and the breakers
grin like waiters, like taxi drivers, these new plantations
by the sea; a slavery without chains, with no blood spilt –
just chain-link fences and signs, the new degradations.
I felt such freedom writing under the acacias.
A Recompensa [34]
No fim deste verso há uma porta se abrindo
para uma varanda azul, onde uma gaivota vai pousar