[it's evident we can explain:] Poem by Gonçalo Manuel Tavares

it's evident we can explain.
it's evident we can conclude.
it's evident we can cure
it's evident we can open 1 practice and say: PAY!
it's evident we can psychoanalyse.
it's evident we can have components.
it's evident we can start at the beginning.
it's evident we can be right and have emotion and sky above and earth below.
it's evident we can eat and not notice, defecate and not notice,
fornicate and fecund and not notice.
it's evident we can Come Back.
it's evident we can enumerate and give the right names to the wrong things.
it's evident we can get it right.
it's evident we can have an unfailing body, except for the Great Failure which is TO DIE and all the other small failures like pain, disease and old age.
it's evident we can fix, explain, conclude, exemplify, begin,
open
1 practice, cure, receive and pay, structure, develop, have clear ideas
and clear ideas, it's evident we can think, dance and then think or the other way round
it's evident, at last, again, I insist, that we can explain,
but it's better not.

Translated by Ana Hudson