Heteropsycography

My name is Legion for we are many

Azulejos in São Bento station (from the author’s portfolio)

We start to write these words Before Summer ends
We will break them free like tears in the falling rain
We hear our surrogates inside cringing and wailing
We let words storm our gates and the legion ascends

They flock like swallows to a memento of winter snow
A silent whisper of wings still vibrating like a rainbow
Calling a forlorn name known to them and them alone
From when we stood on the muddy banks of the Yarmouk

Back then we were many in the land of the Gadarenes
Once a large band of brothers now alone among a few
We have sailed to the western shores of old Lusitania
Over waters that are now the sky to the city of Atlantis

We were by Ulysses’s side when he set foot in Olissipo
We fought alongside Viriatus against the Roman gods
We prayed to no God but the God of a thousand faces
The forsaken legion became a renowned legion-slayer

We stood with our First King when he founded Portucale
shoulder to shoulder with Afonso the mightiest of us
We stood…