LUIS FILIPE SARMENTO Luis Filipe Sarmento, (b. 1956). Studied Philosophy at the University of Lisbon. Writer, translator, TV, film and video producer, journalist and teacher. His works, articles and stories have been published in English, Spanish, French, Italian, Arabic, Mandarin, Japanese, Roman, Macedonian, Croatian and Russian.
Translation: Vamberto Freitas Photo: José Lorvão
I AM A MAN BORN OF WOMEN IN VERSE If I say mother, I mean Italy; if I say grandmother, I mean an island, if I say great-grandfather, I mean Galicia; if I say great-grandmother, I mean France One great-great grandfather in Greece, another in Damascus; One a gypsy lost in India, another in the streets of Palestine, If I reach to the tenth grandparents, I’ll be from everywhere, I have my origins everywhere, conceived in all religions; I come from a pirate and surely from a whore, from a maharajah and from a courtesan, a geisha and from a dealer in silks; from an amazonas of the steppes; and a boyar; a vizier and a poet, from a family of robbers in times long ago, Australian sailors, lost in hell for being people of the world, a parental world then I come from various incidences to this reformed Lisbon; at Mouraria a cousin another in the Quartier, a female cousin in Maghreb another in Moscow and yet another in the
Congo thousands in Brazil, my DNA is the world, my cells are the universe. I am a man born by women in verse. In my veins lives a profound refugee I ask where is the crib of my birth?
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