JOSÉ LUIS HOPFFER ALMADA (Cape Verde, 1960)

Orthonimous Autobiography

I was born in a village
in the shadow of a big house
and of the austere penumbra of the mountains

still a child
I went all over the exhausted margins of the river banks
the damp orography of the Assomada
and I became a tree on the plain

the winding of the roads
made me flow into the sea
and drain into the silence
by the side of a city
extended in blue and murmur

Translations by Nicolás Suescún