鉁嶏笍
These photo-poetic essays, presented in the form of diptychs鈥攐ne color photograph and one black-and-white photograph鈥攁re the result of a challenge posed to me by Jo茫o Maria Andr茅 (poet, philosopher, theater director, and full professor at the University of Coimbra). You can read more about this challenge, which evolved into an exhibition of the same name, here.
鉁嶏笍
Behind the crimson that performs desire,
and the night's abyss upon the stage of being,
an angel transforms his body into a cloud
and dreams that the moon wears a woman's face.
鉁嶏笍
Angels write love poems too,
tracing letters in water on the skin of light.
Yet they cannot taste the words,
for the salt of sweat is a gift reserved for humans.
鉁嶏笍
This could be the face of my angels,
this skin without skin and these eyes without eyes,
searching for the lines a god once drew
and then forgot at a corner of time.
鉁嶏笍
Within the creases of the sheet sleep has crumpled,
there is no sweat, no lingering mark of love;
beneath an angel's skin, no fire burns,
and no passion stirs within the satin of their dreams.
鉁嶏笍
How are angels born in the center of the body?
Is there a thread that connects them to the center of the earth?
It is in the center of the skin that time awakens
And it is in the center of the water that life invents itself.
鉁嶏笍
It is in the skin of the light that angels love each other
and in the curve of the shoulder of those who contemplate them
only the white is lost in a thread of tenderness
like a vertical sound over the stones of time.
鉁嶏笍
What angel broke free and opened these handcuffs
and then dressed himself in the skin he did not have?
What angel stripped himself of the life he found,
of the semen he cast in the pain of farewell?
鉁嶏笍
Angels also die in the bodies of birds
between bombs and fuel and the pain of children.
Only the cold light of the blue in which they fall hurts them
so different from the skin of the sky in which they dance.
! [PORTUGUESE VERSION]
Estes ensaios foto-po茅ticos, apresentados em forma de d铆pticos - uma fotografia a cores e outra a preto e branco, 茅 o resultado de um desafio que me foi lan莽ado por Jo茫o Maria Andr茅 (poeta, fil贸sofo, encenador de teatro e professor catedr谩tico da Universidade de Coimbra). Sobre este desafio, que evoluiu para uma exposi莽茫o com o mesmo nome, pode ler mais aqui.