Lisbon is not Alexandria but then
Alexandria is only a metropolis
heightened and exalted in verse, its geometry,
its incisions of small despair.
Give me a city, for this which is mine
is tired and I don't want any other,
give me steps always going down,
old palace balconies,
give me an Alexandria of thought,
with an antiquity that gilds every hour,
every afternoon, but a false,
hyperbolic antiquity,
subtle from being so often imagined, unreal city.
Lisbon is not Alexandria and is tired, there
were places I knew, others hidden,
there are routes I conjecture as the crowds
advance, feast days,
window settings, sills.
I don't want this river, nor that other,
the Heraclytian one, offered to me
in some abridged complete works on the bookshelf.
Give me an earthly city, without posterity
or tongue, a city where I may
open the past of its streets
and, with no other purpose, breathe.

Translated by Ana Hudson