CONFESSION OF ONE WHO FLEW Poem by António Manuel Pires Cabral

1.

But if in these six and a half decades
I was capable of some sort of flight

- which could only have been comparable
to the awkward and rudimentary flight
of chickens, with a great expenditure
of energy to achieve brief and desperate
moments of scant ascension,
but a kind of flying all the same,
by which I managed to stay aloft
in my lighter moments -

now, that cycle of flight having ended,
I must perch, the way birds do.

This isn't like when a shop
changes its line of business
or closes to take inventory
at year's end.
Nor is it like carrying out
an arrest warrant
or atoning for the disorderliness
of being a pedestrian who flew.
Nor is it the inevitable conclusion
to an act of sedition.

Perching, that's all. Returning
to the endearing things of earth.
It's the earth finally claiming what I owe her
and my claiming what she owes me
since my very first hour.

I flew, I'm flown out.
Without nostalgia.

2.

I choose the branch
most suited to my condition and alight
from my flight, perching like a bird
whose flying temporarily peters out.

And just as a perched bird, right
after alighting, still flaps its wings
two or three times,
so I flap mine.

But whereas the bird flaps its wings
to shake off the residue
of its flight,
I flap mine to keep my balance;
the branch bends, I'm not as agile
as I used to be, and I'd fall
if I didn't flap my wings.

Which is to say: I flap my wings the way
the tight-rope walker probes with his rod
and the blind man with his cane.

To feel more comfortable
outside my flight.

3.

And my perching, unlike the bird's,
is not a temporary state. From now on
I'll observe the march of my days
from my definitively perched perspective.

So here I am, perched, trying to accommodate
my body to this new condition.

My eyes look up at the space
from where I banished myself
to see if perchance I scratched
the crystal of air with my flight,
since even the tiniest scratch would cause
the crystal to cease being crystal.

I scratched nothing.
Thanks be to God.
After all that clumsy flying
I leave the air as clear and whole
as I found it.

(It's no wonder. I was always careful to shake
the dust from my feet before rising in flight.)

4.

No, it's not out of nostalgia
that in this terminal hour of perching I remember
the deft but imprudent, and impudent, forays
of my flight and how I seized the light.

It's out of gratitude, I suppose.

Flying was always the most useful
of my useless occupations.
A sprig of hay in the corner of my mouth.
A charitable donation to the flesh.
The orifice through which
torrents drained.

Intensely perched,
this is what I remember.