the hand writes on the mind Poem by Manuel Gusmão

the hand writes on the mind : an arrow
travelling on a piece of paper, a compass card:
the treble clef; la clef des jardins;

the key like a child's train passing
through a patio with a palm tree, between
the white twilight and the red morning;

the city had grown like crests of waves
meeting the aerial constructions of clouds;
halfway up, shimmering triangles waved

and the murmuring earth remembered
the roots of electric trees
in whose branches glowed fish
from the deep.

Not even with arrows could you inhabit such a land,
so you place them into a painting that hallucinates
and you draw a fairy queen: an Arabian

song an Arabian princess written in sackcloth
and haloed with napalm; the forest under construction
multiplies the full moon across the lakeside pilings;

the boats navigate a white night
rising like a hill lit up
by monstrous, odd-shaped flowers:

crosses and spirals waiting for you.