Sometimes ships are greater than houses,
brighter than streets. Cracks in the walls draw them together
to the city's innermost, disperse them to the beach.
Palm shadows bleach there slowly, yellow grains
of sand crumble.
Like a shoal of red fish whose fever the seas
washed away, sunshades float at the shore's edge.
An inscription sunken in the shallows, Marinero,
hip-hop beats from the port café's juke-box
muffle the long waves.
Torn posters on the pavement. Stairs mouldered by wet
near a white boundary wall. Fishbones everywhere,
and signboards below eaves of canvas,
their message long bleached out.
The port swells to infinity with the play of sun and clouds
and dwindles, pressed close along the sea-wall.
Stars like seeds drop from the stone-pines.
Between the benches where the sea chipped away evergreen
steps crease. Strollers and sailors meet and pass by
exchanging voiceless messages.
I imagine their muted conversations, questions or answers,
in a dialect of Tuscany. Among strangers they have the scent
of African sands, exotic isles and chill seaweeds.
Spilled puddles share out a cubist image of the
port. Hawsers from the ships measure out the remnant of dry
land. Granite squares like pieces of black glass
on the dockside. Dull echoes under blocks of
stone. Boats sway by the breakwater like plants
braided with wet rope. Condensed damp gurgles
behind the drawbridges. Smoke or dew evaporates
from empty decks. Between the lighthouse and
the harbour master's office ships pass without
sound, in a blurred mirror.
They drown in a haze scented with
menthol and salty dregs.

Translation: 2007, Kim Burton