In Pain and Portugal - Fado

When I regret what I have said or done,
I take me on a rough and stony road
that leads to a deserted seaside lot,
where things unheard of
are – a simple truth.

A flask half-empty and a glass half-full
upon a tablecloth, the color of the sky.
A crooked bench, a small three-legged stool,
the wooden railings of a pier that ends,
point blank.

And here I am, a backward traveller in time,
in wistful council with a former self.
I stand here, charmed by an unyielding sea
with paths that lead
to the horizon and beyond.

And, like a fool on horseback, in a park,
as on a carousel, pursued by those I knew,
into the rosy climes of Poesy
I ride with passion new.

In distant lives I feared shark and whale –
I was a lonely Mariner –
and begged wild Fortune my old self to tell
the self-same fortune I now know so well,
for neither he, nor I could wholly live
in pain or Portugal.

The stubborn fado of my foreign love,
the bleak saudade of these journeys past…
Then all the cadences of unmade verse
come through with sudden force.

Now I resume a song of pure lust –
for life and joy, and for the luscious breast
of this or any other gal.
And warm transgression moves me through the waves
of pain and Portugal.