L’Eclectique vous propose de découvrir une facette de la mosaïque d’influences de Lisbonne au Portugal à travers l’œil du photographe Rui Borges. L’artiste qui est aussi un poète  nous invite au voyage dans cette capitale européenne  avec une constellation de photos d’azuelos (ensemble de carreaux de faïence décorés) et un texte poétique rédigé en anglais pour partager son amour de sa ville natale. Une douce escale créative  pour satisfaire notre envie insatiable de voyager en couleurs et avec les mots.

I see you. In the absence the ever presence of you, of your naked clavicles bathed by the undulating shimmering of the scorching promise of dawn against the ever changing mosaic landscape of the light revering town.
From every spring of the Al hamma’s maze, to the opening arms of the river, from the sacred vital hum of the undercurrents to the unceremoniously pagan hustling quotidian dance of the surface, alive and unaware of the tile’s weaving secret language
I sense you, when climbing and drawing Graça’s map along its tightened alleys with the most supreme of blues as vault, sense you when traversing the lunar mood of Silver Street into the widening solar expanses of the Gilded one across the human stream, rushing towards the solemn arch as each ceramic note, in all their traces and arabesques, communicate and compose a unique melody.

I breathe you, when Lisbon awakens every of the Sun’s particle is an undenied promise, the summoning of a vow, an offering. The perfect timeless hour to run with our fingers along the walls’ riddle contoured by the distant airwaved Fado’s summoners of destiny, pouring out the windows, a mother of pearl cascade on slowly opening wavering eyelids, slowly blossoming chests, I celebrate you, in the steps of alfacinhas, serpentining in between road and sidewalk, in the daring confident free flight of the seagull amidst the intricated threads of Ulysses’ tapestry.

I celebrate you, in the constellation of basil scented hamlets of what Lisbon is made of, in the manorial terraces blending their rosewood fragrance with the Tejo, I celebrate you, in the proud display of your freshly washed underwear fluttering at the wind from the windows made gardens, in the modesty with which the town effuses its garden made perenniality, in the running children with their soaked hair waving a bom dia to the waving limping man and a message to the baker at the speed of laughter. I celebrate you, in the tenderness in the harsh hands of the stevedore that no longer is, a sitting troubadour of cranes, in the defying wrinkles of the raucously crooning fishwomen.
I sing you, slowly, as a haze, swimming as the crows crowning you, as a sleek river queen along the plains and crevices of the glaze sea.
I sing you in the fate, once an outcast, in Lisbon’s knowing to where its uncharted day goes, in a couple of lovers passing hand in hand in front of the old tailor of Remedios Street, where ‘there’s remedy for everything…’ garbs uniforms decorations and panama hats, across the road, firecrackers and turpentine.
I sing you even not knowing the verses, when the verses seem to know me, in the whiteness of that churchyard where one day my soul was christened, I sing you, when someone shouts ‘action’ and the old tinker slowly closes his emerald doors.

I embrace you, when resting in the Inner Fountain Square the whole town becomes you, as a withe carved wavering pattern becomes engraved in the back of your resting golden long legs and your Tagus glimmering eyes wave the answer key and meaning to the apparently disconnected scattered battered camouflaged glaring multitude of vitreous fragments. When the hometown and body architectures, reverie and flesh, summer merged, become the primal unuttered revelation, a delta in the heart of the labyrinth, where all words flow, beyond the emergency of being.
I embrace you, as a breeze, with the vast arms of the humming engraved and blossoming from every chapter of this mosaic. And if we could ascend in this embrace we would contemplate how every tile of us, entwined, draws the mosaic that spells Beauty.

Rui Borges

Rui Borges