Regresso

All paths lead to night
to its ambush of stars and twilight.

Mythological time slowly spills over into the invisible everyday. Five tangential characters inhabit a Lisbon made of interstices and dazzlement. They cross paths, but barely see each other. Dawns succeed one another, between nooks and cliffs, like the tides, long since repeating every gesture.

In Cais do Sodré, Eurídice leaves a nightclub, takes the metro and heads to Sete Rios, where Orfeu waits anxiously. Eurídice is free and wants, above all, to be able to want.

It is seven in the morning, and the fear of the unknown, like a serpent, hides among the shadows along the Pineios River, whose slow flow is a foreboding that guides Eurídice to the underworld.

Through a window in Mouraria, Penélope gazes at the Tagus and waits. In Ithaca, the horizon encloses the infinity of an absent Ulysses, who “has been away for many years,” perhaps he will return.

Like yesterday, it is again midday, and Penélope waits.

Sísifo drives a rubbish truck and “already counts the days until his retirement.” In the distance, only the memory of the Gulf of Corinth remains, like a pile of rubbish, routine and circular, rising and toppling, again and again.

At the intersection of Av. de Berna with 5 de Outubro, Hermes feels “the deepest wound.” It is nine in the evening, but time has broken the illusion that the past moves forward. “They say he was going too fast.” Hermes did not see the red light and now contemplates the silence, lying in the ambulance. The sun rises on Mount Kyllini, Hermes’ dreams scattered across the asphalt like a fragile vessel crossing the Aegean Sea.

Prometeu “mistook alcohol for the fire of the Gods.” He wanders through the night, because ties disgust him. In a tavern in Graça, “cirrhosis has long been devouring his liver, meticulous and faithful.” The mountain ranges of the Caucasus stretch across the horizon, while Homero descends from the train at Santa Apolónia.