The brightest of winter mornings, and a walk with João, a Brazilian friend. He is irate about corruption and violence at home.

‘Desordem e regresso, those are the words our flag should bear.’

My flag is wordless on the surface, but were I to scratch at the colours, I imagine that something would emerge, faint and true beneath the red, white and blue. Nostalgia and denial, perhaps.

Later, at home, I read to João a poem by Stanley Kunitz, The Layers. He is struck above all by the final section and asks me to read it once more.

In my darkest night,

when the moon was covered

and I roamed through wreckage,

a nimbus-clouded voice

directed me:

“Live in the layers,

not on the litter.”

Though I lack the art

to decipher it,

no doubt the next chapter

in my book of transformations

is already written.

I am not done with my changes.