Can I speak of death while alive?
Can I gripe of imagined hunger?
Can I fight our hidden verses?
Can I fake everything, being nothing?
Can I pull out truths from lies,
Or flood a desert with springs?
Can I change chords and lyres,
And make my night ardent sun?
If everything is reduced to empty words
and with them I cover my retreat,
From the shadow pulpit I deny light
like the song refuses to be embalmed.
Glass eyes and imprisoned wings,
I’ve remained at wasted words
Like the vestige of true things.
[ José Saramago, "Taxidermia, ou poeticamente hipócrita", Os poemas possíveis, 1966 ]
