Body on a horizon of water, body open to the slow intoxication of fingers, body defended by the splendour of apples, surrendered hill by hill, body lovingly made moist by the tongue’s pliant sun.

Body with the taste of cropped grass in a secret garden, body where I am at home, body where I lie down to suck up silence, to hear the murmur of blades of grain, to breathe the deep dark sweetness of the bramble bush.

Body of a thousand mouths, all tawny with joy, all ready to sip, ready to bite till a scream bursts from the bowels and mounts to the towers and pleads for a dagger. Body for surrendering to tears. Body ripe for death.

Body for imbibing to the end – my ocean, brief and white, my secret vessel, my propitious wind, my errant, unknown, endless navigation.

Translated from the Portuguese by Alexis Levitin