The Splendor of Portugal

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(we were eating lunch in the kitchen and you could see the cranes and the boats back behind the last rooftops of Ajuda)

Lena filled my plate with smoke, disappeared in the smoke, and as she disappeared her voice tarnished the glass of the window before it too vanished

“You haven’t seen your siblings in fifteen years”

(as her voice enveloped the window frame it took with it the hills of Almada, the bridge, the statue of Christ alone beating its helpless wings above the mist)

until the smoke dissipated, Lena reappeared little by little with her fingers outstretched toward the breadbasket

“You haven’t seen your siblings in fifteen years”

so that all of a sudden I was aware of the time that had passed since we arrived here from Africa, of the letters from my mother, first from the plantation and later from Marimba, four little huts on a hillside of mango trees

(I remember the regional administrator’s house, the store, the ruins of the barracks shipwrecked and sinking in the tall grass)

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