“Poetry, my teacher: light the certainties of men and the tone of my words. You see, I risk speech even with bullets piercing phonemes. It is the word – that which is larger than its size – that speaks, does and happens. Here it reels, riddled with bullets. Uttered by toothless mouths in alleyway conspiracies, in deadly decisions. Sounds stir on ocean floors. The absence of sunlight really does darken forests. The strawberry liquid of icecream makes hands sticky. Words are born in thought; leaving lips, they acquire soul in the ears, yet sometimes this auditory magic does not make it as far as the mouth because it is swallowed dry. Massacred in the stomach along with rice and beans, these almost words are excreted rather than spoken. Words balk. Bullets talk”.
Paulo Lins, 'City of God', (p.16)
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