Ilus. José Campos Biscardi 

He who appears

in the photograph

is not me:

it is what they did to me.

Hanged,

with a tie around his neck,

in a bureaucratic ritual.

Evidently a standard model,

in accordance with present rules.

No particular sign,

or any individual vestige,

it is above all

a prototype of photography

of a public and repetitious image

pre-fabricated!

Face to face,

with a sullen and impersonal gaze,

looking like any other

but never like me

who long since has ceased to exist

in the accounts of human resources

monotonously leveled

by rationalizing disparities.

The standard suit

and the look borrowed

from icons of executives

with abundant documentation

and protected right.

Duly recorded,

stamped,

predisposed to the coziness of dead archives.

From the book Paths of integration: an anthology of Poetry. (Brasília: Thesaurus, 1993.

Published in Portuguese, Spanish and Portuguese.