WHO IS WHO

Poema de Antonio Miranda

Trad. de Asta-Rose Alcaide

At what level
or dimension
power provokes dizziness
or excitement?
Anonymous bureaucrat

How fragile is the balance
of an organogram?

An exercise in juggling,
or else,
a syndrome of contrivance?

And the power,
Is it vertical on the chronogram?
or is horizontal and resonant,
self-sustainable
on the pentagram?

Could it be the dialect
of antagonisms
or an award for patience
and submission?

A continuous
and rational act?

Abnormal?

A stroke of dices abolishes misfortune?

And you, who are you
within the structure?

Your skeleton
in which archive is it buried?

Who decides our level of calories,
yours, our privileges?

And intelligence,
is it a synonym of survival?

Subservience,
can it rise to the level of science?

Who redeems life,
cornered by norms and rules?

(Are they dogmas or prejudices?)

Our life
rented
and confined
- is it all or nothing?

Rio de Janeiro, 1981. Published originally in: Caminhos de Integração/Caminos de Integración; Paths of Integration, anthology of poetry of Latin American authors organized by Sofía Vivo in Portuguese, Spanish and English (Brasília, Thesaurus, 1993).