I think of your hands as gills inside the sea - Luís Carlos Patraquim

I think of your hands as gills inside the sea

your hands that breathe sounds

and I think I’m within a shoal of moving fish

all things I see are islands in movement

and you appear, new-founded country,

stripped naked of all leaves,

rising from the land of shifting obsessions

to the multi-coloured pulse

with which the tendons are spurred

O what gills that do not breathe, your hands

that drive the river into wildness

and carve out the geography of the world

“the world rests entirely on your eyes”

Paul Éluard

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Luís Carlos Patraquim (born 1953) Mozambique

Translated by John Mitras

Source: Luís Carlos Patraquim: Ten Poems, John Mitras, Stained Glass, 2011