Emanuel Félix was born in Angra do Heroísmo, Terceira, Açores.  He is one of the Azores most renowned poets with poetry and essays published in Portugal and translated to English.  He has been a leading cultural entity in the Azores with works that have analyzed the creative trajectory of the islands.  He is also an art critic and has done studies around the history of the arts in the archipelago.  He makes his home in his native city of Angra where he was, for a short time, the Mayor.

How I loved our girls

discreet fabricators of the penumbra

they kept my sleep as if they were keeping

my dream

they repeated with me the first words

as if they were repeating my verses

they settled the silence of the house

nullifying the ground the feet the doors where

they left

always leaving a trace of garden mint

they brought in the morning

each morning

the smell of fresh bread of humidity from the earth

of  milk just drawned

            (if they would go by all together now

             you would see how the air would be filled with their

sweet and maternal odor

as when a heard goes by)

our girls would get near

and I would listen to the restless sea breeze

of their bodies

at times hard and cold like pebbles

other times tepid like the interior of the fruits

in autumn

they would comb my hair

and their hands were light and fresh like the leaves

in springtime

looked into the eyes of our girls

but I know that it was in them that the sun

would light up 

or the agitation from the surface of the lakes

of the gardens with lakes where they would take me

holding my hands

our girls

who had boyfriends and with them

betrayed

our undefined complicity

I always forgave and still now forgive

our girls

for I knew and still know that they did it

because of the bad side of their inexplicable kindness

the addiction of virtue from their immense tenderness

from the ineffable tenderness of my first love

my love for our girls.     

Translated from the Portuguese by Diniz Borges