a small key...

... despondently offered to a recalcitrant friend who has a heart of water, but persists in behaving like stone.


Make a key, however small,
enter the house.
Allow yourself the tenderness, have mercy
on the matter of dreams and birds.

Summon the fire, clarity, the music
in the groin.
Do not say stone, say window.
Do not be like a shadow.

Say man, say child, say star.
Repeat the syllables
where light is happy and lingers.

Say it again: man, woman, child.
Where beauty is newer.


from Eugenio de Andrade, "Faz uma Chave", in Branco no Branco / White on White (freely translated from the Portuguese).