Felos

In 2005 a chapbook of poems “Felos ainda serra” was published by AMASTRA-N-GALAR . These were poems I wrote in response to the photographs of Galician Carnaval maskers, felos, taken by Emilio Araúxo. Today I found a newspaper reference to the collection on the net, but, you guessed it, I don’t have a word of Galician.

Here’s one of the poems and, above, one of Emilio’s beautiful photographs

This evening I will leave my mask and crutch,
go to the well, immerse myself
till there is no chill;
till water, moss, sky and I are all one marble.

So when you find me, my love, this smile,
my limbs and fingers will be milk-white;
rosaries will be hanging; petitions,
stuffed between my jaws, fluttering in the wind.

And the reason will hang: a faint quivering
of atoms in the air around you,
an SOS in a register just beyond audibility;
and the mask’s smile: a mouth full of soil.