A Form of Speech and of Death
--Adélia Prado (trans. by Davd Coles)

He had a way of pronouncing the word unshakeable.
The final "l" enundated in the Dutch way,
they who preached for us, catechism, mission, Sunday services.
"Unshakeable certainty", "unshakeable faith", "power unshakeable"
When he used this strong word, he did not utter it
with the mouth of one who eats perishable substances,
or names what he deems unworthy of his better speaking
because common things:
hammer, anvil, iron, the foreman, the Chief.
"Unshakeable",
the tongue lingering at the base of the upper teeth,
the demanding doctrine requiring the purest sound,
in accordance with what it expressed, things of God,
eternal things, terrifying in the impossibility of their maculation.
But when this all too shakeable life stiffened his chin,
his paralysed and blackened tongue acquiesced,
its tip turned back to the root of the teeth,
unshakeable.