THE TRIUMPH OF INSECTS Poem by António Manuel Pires Cabral

Not all insects will make it to November.
In December hardly any wings will be seen
attempting their resigned, late-season
flaps that go nowhere, though the curtains
may yet harbor some survivor
less exposed to the weather. And January
will retain almost no memory of the tiny life
deposited somewhere by diligent females
and tenaciously resistant to the calendar.

I, meanwhile, will have resisted the cold
and perhaps scoffed at the transitory death
of so many humble bodies
gone downriver.

But when May finally beats its drum
or blows its horn,
the shriveled wings will unwrinkle,
the sky will be small, the flowers scarce.
And the vile insects will triumph
over the ice and over me,
my afflictions.

What's the difference between
sixty years and one year?
What difference between a week
and one day?

Unless it's that no insect suffers
the agony of winter, whereas I fiddle
with these words of exorcism,
these laborious dialectics,
and I don't hide my face, since I can't
hide my face, from the vicious
countenance of the long harsh winter
that will seize me by way of the insects.