I will my collection of hats,

straw the Yucatan, fez Algiers 1935,

Russian beaver, Irish fisherman’s knit,

collapsible silk opera, a Borsalino,

to a dead man,

the Portuguese poet, my dear Fernando,

who without common loyalty,

wrote under seven different names

in seven different styles.

He was a man of many faces,

a smoker and non-smoker.

His poets, come to live in Lisbon,

had different sexual preferences,

histories and regional accents.

Still their poems had a common smell

and loneliness that was Fernando’s.

His own character 

was to him like ink to a squid,

something to hide behind.

What did it matter, writing in Portuguese

after the first World War?

The center was Paris, the languages French and English.

In Lisbon, workers on the street corner were arguing

over what was elegance, the anarchist manifesto,

the trial of Captain Artur Carlos De Barros,

found guilty of “advocating circumcision”

and teahing Marranos no longer to enter church

saying “When I enter I adore neither wood nor stone

but only the Ancient of Days who rules all.”

The Portuguese say

they have the “illusion” to do something,

meaning they very much want to do it.

He could not just sit in the same cafe

wearing his own last hat, drinking port

and smoking Ideals forever.