Porto - Beijing

 
The word is the power;
poetry, the clandestine complicity
that to all opposes,
to life and to death;
the poet, the informer.

To meditate on all this and sign Shang Tong*,
is almost aggression.

Still, I reaffirm every word, every letter.

Even the sound of flapping butterfly wings.

_{* Shang Tong, pseudonym of Li Tuan (circa 1390-1420), was a basket-maker as a child. In addition to the fond memory, he kept the grateful pleasure of still today, at age 79, making rocking chairs. He never put it in his CV, though, which includes, in his own words, three long short stories, six short long novels, and one still unseen book of poems that he expects will be published post-mortem.}

When we were there, surrounded by friends, I hardly knew that the language I articulated couldn't amount to a coherent theoretical defence, but it formed, fundamentally, the poetics of poetry. Here, from a distance, I feel estranged from that defence.

I leave to your judgment the possibility of understanding.

Half-world away, the harp is expression.

I sketch, weave the staccato, the soft and insidious silk of wings of cocoons of wild blackberries.

Nothing else matters.

The word is the power, and the poet its prophet.