INTRODUCTORY TEXT Poem by Margarida Vale de Gato

1.
For me it makes little difference: poet,  poetess - 
depends on the measure, and the stress - 
I prefer translator, but admit  
that I sometimes can't be plied, I'm a narcissist.


2.
My earliest poetry was about rain  
and weeping. Today it would be 
prose and rain, or gunpowder: 
 
it's raining out, wind rapes the window, 
a street is never like the brochures - 
With fine eloquence I stab my note  
 
to the world through my heart. 
It bursts,  withered muscle bloat -  
a thousand times that life were more than art.

3.
If the line's strict measure doesn't aim to show
but is a seeking instead -
or is the taste of what it finds . . .
If I don't write to order,
but showered by latter rain.

4.
Certainly, I can pose
for the camera,
mold my mouth to the click, close
down the diaphragm. It depends
how the roll is developed -
model artist prey, I'm like everyone:
the lives I don't touch interest me
in uneven parts of avarice and voracity.
Before they know me, period,
they know me periodically.