MEDITATION ON RUINS Poem by Nuno Júdice

He disembarked in a living room without chairs or gilt mouldings:
just rotting beams, vases with plastic flowers, windows
whose broken panes looked out onto the highway. No wind,
no sea: only the sound of cars entering through the cracks
to echo on the ceiling (rafters showing through the stucco
remains). Outside he hung on to the rusted rails
of decrepit balconies. He discerned, through the underbrush
that was overrunning everything, a landscape worthy
of a Romantic painting. The houses covering the valley and
the hills taken over by scrap iron hide a past
with flocks and shepherds. But perhaps the flute's song
was never heard here. Indeed, this house conserves nothing
but ancient silences, which the using has transformed into sepia
spots in memory. Now they're blended into the colour of the walls
and harbour only dens of scarcely discernible reptiles,
in winter, hidden from the universe. But someone was here
very recently. And a pile of wood still smokes as
the sun ascends from the horizon, where dawn's cold colours
do not dissipate, and no bird greets
the new day.