Being Portuguese is the same as being an Aborigine or an American
I can eat dry cod and roasted potatoes anywhere
Camões and Pessoa in all languages like Rilke and Confucius
Portuguese connects me only with the literary dead
I live in this corner due to climatic inertia
I’m never here - Lisbon is no longer the city of churches and army barracks
it's an intermittent scenery where I live separately - I go to the supermarket
and buy Belgian chocolate and Chilean wine
I no longer have enemies be they Saracens or Chinamen like Pinto*
nor do the Portuguese bother me or their grossly behaving
classes which aren’t even the worst - that’s why I live here
with my books and CDs which are the same everywhere