Ariana-Sophia Kartsonis

I Don’t Know How Many Souls You Have, My Feathered Fernando

The maestro waves his baton1

Emu makes me sing
new notes: a diapason
appassionato

I feel the blood-pain but can’t see the claw.2

Semiotic bird
object-coding Barthes’ bliss
einfuhlung abates.

Why is it to be happy, we cannot know we are?3

Waking with Emu.
Your face the first thing I see.
My fine, feathered friend.


And it all has something of love
Even if this love can’t speak4

Notes:
1Fernando Pessoa, “Slanting Rain.”
2Fernando Pessoa, “I Hear Night Across the Street.”
3Fernando Pessoa “Almost Anonymous You Smile.”
4Fernando Pessoa, “The Child That Laughs in the Street.”

Ariana-Sophia Kartsonis and Caleb Adler

I Don’t Know How Many Souls You Have, My Feathered Fernando first appeared in Spork.

Posted on November 1, 2007 7:08 AM