How To Tell One Country From Another

Querido Umbigo:

Wheter it is possible to become lost.

Wheter one tree looks like another.

Wheter there is water all around the edges or not.

Wheter there are edges or wheter

there are just insects.

Wheter the insects bite,

wheter you would die,

from the bites of the insects.

Wheter you would die.

Wheter you would die for your country.

Wheter anyone in the country would die for your country.

Let's be honest here.

A layer of snow, a layer of granite, a layer of snow.

What you think lies under the snow.

What you think lies.

Wheter you think white on white is a state of mind

or blue on blue or green on green.

Wheter you think there is a state,

of mind.

How many clothes you have to take off

before you can make love.

This I think is important:

The undoing of buttons, the gradual shedding

of one colour after another. It leads

to the belief that what you see is not

what you get!

Wheter there are preliminaries,

hallways, vestibules,

basements, furnaces

between sentences, between pieces

of furniture, parasites in your eyes,

drinkable water.

Wheter there has ever been

an invading army.

Wheter, if there were an invanding army,

you would collaborate

Poor boy, you'd say, he looks cold

standing out there, and he's only twenty,

from his point of view this must be hell.

A fur coat is what he needs,

a cup of tea, a cup of coffee,

a warm body.

Wheter on the contrary

you'd slit his throat in his sleep

or in yours, I ask you.

So, you are a nice person.

You would behave well.

What you mean behaving well.

when the outline of a man

whose face you cannot see

appears at your bedroom window,

wheter you would shoot.

If you had a gun, that is.

Wheter you would have a gun.

It goes on.

Margaret Atwood

Este é um dos meus mais queridos poemas de sempre, recuperado à pouco tempo de um dos meus milhares de cadernos...
E o que me apetecia mesmo era ir perder-me num país, qualquer país onde fosse porssível perder-me, ou então como a Alice, ia perder-me no país das maravilhas...