sing at the edge of silence

I Feel the Dead

I feel the dead in the cold of violets
And that great vagueness in the moon.

The earth is doomed to be a ghost,
She who rocks all death in herself.

I know I sing at the edge of silence,
I know I dance around suspension,
Possess around dispossession.

I know I pass around the mute dead
And hold within myself my own death.

But I have lost my being in so many beings,
Died my life so many times,
Kissed my ghost so many times,
Known nothing of my acts so many times,
That death will be simply like going
From inside the house into the street.

[Sophia de Mello Breyner, trans. from the Portuguese by Ruth Fainlight]