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« José Luís Tavares
» Luís Cardoso
New Textualities
Maria da Conceição Lima
“Residence”

You will return along the old hillside
without warning.
It will be like yesterday, at nightfall:
remote, sudden, the whistle.
And on the way, a festive sob
is spilt.

The light will be humid
the rain intimate
over the mark of your feet.
Finger by finger, leaf by leaf
you will touch the smells
the witchcraft of the garden –
grandmother’s dwarf lemon-tree
the decrepit breadfruit tree
the most shady oca plant
the gnarled kimi
and at the entrance, engraved in the clay,
the ghost of the white billy-goat.
The stair will creak at your first step.
You will climb slowly, concrete
Without treading on the loose floorboard.
The door will be open, the torch lit.

from O útero da casa [The womb of the home]
b. 1961 S. Tomé e Príncipe
© Instituto Camões, 2007