Udder and Other Poems

By Januário Esteves

Udder

In the silky light where the day dawns
Crimson horizons to the south stretch
And all the beauty the world magnifies
In the solitude of the communion they harbor
 
And in that simple connection that emerges
Becomes the solicitous and obedient lover
Careless in amazement cries
For that rapture you lack
 
It wraps itself in an embrace by the firmament
Proceeding from that spark that sprouts
Like ambrosia that invigorates us
 
In an idyll of souls accentuate in feeling
The fatality of the flesh that the spirit defeats
And to the earth given death, matter incorporates.

Coming

Screaming cacophonies pervade the night
On the corners of the streets, the painful flow
Of moral conveniences trafficking ballot boxes
In a rush of formless colorful prostration
 
In which lie all the bad excesses
All gossip stunned by emptiness
Soft and sticky that insults the practice of ends
About the depressed needy who is gloomy
 
And concomitant moods roam
Stuck to the ancient custom that makes them enchanted
Through the fog in which hardships move
 
From doctrines to norms to rules that block
The light of knowledge through enlightened eyes
Hijacking future ages from all beau

Destiny

Like water flowing by the wind blown away
So the time for us flows by
Where the tremors linger in the ravaged body
And the hours like gullets swallow extorting
 
The most beautiful beauty all the splendor
That teaches us captives of perennial destiny
Transfiguring the existing into ravishing
Consequence of the soul receiving in scrutiny
 
But rejected, we go through the unfathomable
In a slow agony that consumes us
In the haunting glow that dazzles us
 
At the roots we sip the endless beginning
That caresses us the belief that kills hunger
In the quiet acceptance that life seeks.

Flash

You, whose troubles of days make trouble
From the enchantment of the flesh that dies
And said with your rosary the traps
Of a capricious love that matures
 
Searches in the fortunate memories
The liquid will of what satisfies you
In serious heated consummations
To ashes you reduce the boldest vein
 
Something happens in the heat of the day
When the words run out of meaning
They shed cold sweats on the opposite
 
And see stubbornly bring joy
To the remnant that remains hidden
And discover that you are the lighting of the face.

Januário Esteves was born in Coruche and was raised near Costa da Caparica,
Portugal. He graduated in electromechanical installations, uses the pseudonym Januanto and has been writing poetry since very young. In 1987 he published poems in the Jornal de Letras, and participated over the years in some collective publications. 1st published work Vertigo by Edições Horus, and Ultramarino 2nd work published by Editora Cordel de Prata.