On Death

You would know the secret of death.
But how shall you find it unless you seek... it in the heart of life?

The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light.

If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life.
For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.


In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond;
And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring.
Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour.
Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling, that he shall wear the mark of the king?
Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

Kahlil Gibran

Um poema solto

Às altas torres chegam os ventos tristes,
Na floresta do Norte brilha o Sol da manhã;
Ele vagueia lá em baixo, por distâncias infinitas.
Rios e lagos, tão profundos, tão longínquos.

Que barca nos levará a essas margens?
E como custa a suportar - a solidão!
Voando para Sul, eis que um ganso selvagem
Lança ao passar um longo grito desolado.

Segue a sua rota o meu desgosto, na direcção do ausente.
Que possa clamar-lhe a minha dor, em seu grito,
Aquela ave que no espaço já desaparece,
Asa que foge e me rasga o coração.


Cao Zhi*

*Cao Zhi (192–232) was a Chinese poet during the late Eastern Han Dynasty and Three Kingdoms period. His poetry style, greatly revered during the Jin Dynasty and Southern and Northern Dynasties, came to be known as the jian'an style.

COEUR SOLITAIRE

Dans la langueur,
Mon pauvre coeur,
Seul, demeure,
Et par se taire,
Faisant mystère,
Bas, Il pleure.

Malade et blanche,
Terrible branche
De ce bois,
Il sens tout tendre,
Au voir descendre
Faible voix.

C’est de la vie
La nostalgie
De son pas
Et solitaire
Par sur la terre
Il se va’.


(Abril de 1952).
Ives Gandra

'Chanson'

Parmi le feuillage
le vent chante une berceuse.
De douces caresses...

Delores Pires - Clair de Lune

***

... I wander afield
somewhere in a time
only memory knows...

(Fernando Campanella)

Tanka

Rayon de soleil,
fragile, touche la larme
de l'enfant qui pleure.
Elle tombe discrètement
et forme une jolie perle !

Delores Pires — Le Voyage de mes Rêves

***

(Foto by Fernando Campanella)

... my horse is the wind, galloping through a haze of dust....

(Fernando Campanella)

Autumn Sadness

Air and sky are swathed in gold
Fold on fold,
Light glows through the trees like wine.
Earth, sun-quickened, swoons for bliss
'Neath his kiss,
Breathless in a trance divine.

Nature pauses from her task,
Just to bask
In these lull'd transfigured hours.
The green leaf nor stays nor goes,
But it grows
Royaler than mid-June's flowers.

Such impassioned silence fills
All the hills
Burning with unflickering fire-
Such a blood-red splendor stains
The leaves' veins,
Life seems one fulfilled desire.

While earth, sea, and heavens shine,
Heart of mine,
Say, what art thou waiting for?
Shall the cup ne'er reach the lip,
But still slip
Till the life-long thirst give o'er?

Shall my soul, no frosts may tame,
Catch new flame
From the incandescent air?
In this nuptial joy apart,
Oh my heart,
Whither shall we lonely fare?

Seek some dusky, twilight spot,
Quite forgot
Of the Autumn's Bacchic fire.
Where soft mists and shadows sleep,
There outweep
Barren longing's vain desire.


Emma Lazarus
(1849 - 1887 / New York / United States)

'A alma no Jardim da Paz"

Então a mente, por falta de prazer,
Se rende à sua felicidade;
A mente, esse oceano onde cada um
Descobre a si mesmo;
Mas cria e transcende
Outros mundos e outros mares distantes,
Aniquilando tudo o que foi feito
A um pensamento verde numa sombra verde.


Aqui, nas fontes de pedra escorregadia,
Ou entre as árvores que o musgo acaricia,
Do corpo a veste enfim despindo,
Minha alma para os ramos vai subindo:
Ali, como um pássaro, senta e canta,
E cisca e as asas com o bico vai alisando;
E, até estar preparado para o vôo mais alongado,
Reflete em sua plumas matizes variados.

Andrew Marvell

*Escritor inglês, nascido em 1621 e falecido em 1678, estudou em Cambridge, tendo abandonado os estudos para empreender uma longa viagem pela Europa.
De regresso a Londres, contactou com os diferentes círculos literários da época, e publicou, em 1650, An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland, o que é considerado um dos grandes poemas políticos da literatura inglesa. Cromwell voltou a ser tema das composições poéticas de Marvell no poema Upon the Death of His late Highness the Lord Protector. Embora tenha gozado de uma elevada reputação enquanto autor de sátiras, de entre as quais se destaca Last Instructions to a Painter, e pelas suas obras em prosa, nomeadamente: Mr. Smirk, Or the Divine in Mode, A Short Historical Essay Concerning General Councils e An Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government in England, nas quais ataca o poder real arbitrário, Marvell era virtualmente desconhecido como poeta lírico.
O reconhecimento deste autor enquanto um dos grandes poetas metafísicos surgiu nos séculos XIX e XX, tendo o volume póstumo, Miscellaneous Poems, sido objecto de múltiplos estudos, motivados pelo tratamento irónico e enigmático de material poético convencional.

Andrew Marvell. In Infopédia [Em linha]. Porto: Porto Editora, 2003-2010.

NIHILISMO

En el fondo de ti vuela la mariposa
personal ¡Salta en el vacío!
Nada suplanta la experiencia diestra
¿Qué haces en la ribera lamentándote?
momento piloto del ser monumento
Estar en el espacio santísimo y divino
las dos pupilas diarias y el órgano pineal
y mirar las estrellas con ojo terco

En la época dorada saber poner las manos
sobre la Nada no coger ya nada

La mixtificación no te rodea


Carlos Edmundo de Ory
(1923, Cádiz España)

"TINTED-GLASS WINDOWS"

(Saint Francis stain glass in the little church in Taizé -France)

Why do I write?
Why do I sometimes
into my hands clasp the light
only to spread it,
a thousand gasping wings
probing the sideless skies -

and the universe
suddenly dresses bright
and a tinted glass
in a chapel
then reflects
my heart…

(Fernando Campanella)

VITRAIS

Por que escrevo?
Por que em minhas mãos
às vezes a luz retenho
apenas para estendê-la -
mil asas ofegantes
sondando os céus
sem beirais –

e de repente o universo
se faz luzente
e uma capela
reflete então
meu coração
em seus vitrais...

Fernando Campanella

BUTTERFLY LILIES

(Foto by Fernando Campanella)

Behold these pollen-craving brides
before their scented spells fade
and their muslin-petalled veils fray.


(Fernando Campanella)

'FALLING STAR'

Raise thy longings to me
I sparkle when the day is asleep
And frolicking birds are lain -

Even when the Aldebarans are blinded
And thy solid moons seem to wane,
Rise, never tire, plead on me -

Plead, on the very mercy of a sentry
Who sensing the wants of your heart
Would leave somber cells unattended
And massive night portals ajar.

Fernando Campanella


ESTRELA CADENTE

Ergue teu anelo a mim
Eu lampejo quando o dia adormece
E aves buliçosas já vão repousar -

Mesmo quando as *Aldebarans se cegam
E tuas sólidas luas parecem minguar,
Eleva-te, nunca te canses, pede a mim -

Pede, à clemência mesma de um guardião
Que enternecido de tuas penúrias
Te livrasse da cela escura, do açoite,
Deixando entreabertos
Os maciços portais da noite.

Fernando Campanella

(Alpha Tauri) conhecida como Aldebarã ou Aldebaran é a estrela mais brilhante da constelação Taurus. mm

'YELLOW MOON'

(Foto by Fernando Campanella)

Don't mourn over past lovers, yellow moon,
for you have preserved your charms
and enticed mortals to your feet
since generations of old.
Don’t cry, though we’re lone wanderers
and you last so much longer than I.
Night is but a wondrous sounding
chance – take my hand, thus,
leave your seat – shall we dance?

Fernando Campanella


'LUA AMARELA'

Não lamentes idos amores, lua amarela,
pois ainda preservas teus encantos
e envolves mortais em tua trança
desde imemoráveis gerações.
Não chores, embora solitários errantes
sejamos, e sobrevivas tão mais a mim.
A noite é apenas uma assombrosa
E sonora chance – dá-me tua mão, assim,
Sai de teu canto – e que comigo dances.

(Fernando Campanella)

'DAYS THAT COME AND GO'

Days that come and go,
It is not worth the while;
Only one dawn I know,
The morning of her smile.

Nights that come and go,
In vain your shadow lies;
Only love's dusk I know,
The evening of her eyes.


John Vance Cheney
(1848-1922)
"Days That Come and Go" is reprinted from The Little Book of American Poets. Ed. Jessie B. Rittenhouse. Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1915.

Abro a minha boca e o mar se regozija...

Abro a minha boca e o mar se regozija
E leva as minhas palavras a suas escuras grutas
E às suas focas pequenas as murmura
Nas noites em que choram os tormentos do homem.

Abro as minhas veias e enrubram-se os meus sonhos
Transformam-se em arcos para os bairros dos meninos
E em lençóis para as raparigas que velam
Para ouvir às ocultas os prodígios do amor.

Aturde-me a madressilva e desço ao meu jardim
E enterro os cadáveres dos meus mortos secretos
E às estrelas traídas que eram suas
Corto o cordão dourado pra caírem no abismo

O ferro enferruja e eu castigo o seu século
Eu que já experimentei a dor de mil pontas
Com violetas e narcisos a nova
Faca vou preparar que convém aos Heróis.

Desnudo o meu peito e os ventos se desatam
E vão varrer as ruínas e as almas destruídas
Das espessas nuvens limpam a terra
Pra que surjam à luz os Prados encantados.

Odysséas Elytis
Tradução de Manuel Resende.

Odysséas Elytis (pseudônimo de Odysseas Alepoudelis) nasceu na ilha de Creta no dia 2 de Novembro de 1911. Em 1960 recebeu o seu primeiro prêmio de poesia, ao qual se seguiram outros e o Prêmio Nobel da Literatura em 1979. Faleceu no dia 18 de Março de 1996.

Ave, Tao

Ame o belo, ame o tosco
ame o pai
o filho
ou o espírito de louco.
Mas ame.

Ame cedo, sob alegrias de Vésper
(...)
Ame o conhecimento do amor
e as formas de amor
o amor frater
os mil amores.
Ame o amor que já ousa dizer seu nome.
(...)
Ame réptil, ame erectus, ame sapiens.

Mire-se em beleza e pó de anatomias fugidias.
Ame Sírius, a luz difusa, e as Graças
- e a asa errática do Espírito sobre as águas.
Ame símile, ame díspar, ame incondicional.

Ama et labora.

Salve, Paz do Deus dos homens,
Ave, Tao.


Fernando Campanella

THE OVEN BIRD

There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a midsummer and a midwood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Midsummer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished sing.


Roberto Frost
(1874-1963)

The Lake

(Claude Monet)

Water lilies load all over
The blue lake amid the woods,
That imparts, while in white circles
Startling, to a boat its moods.

And along the strands I'm passing
Listening, waiting, in unrest,
That she from the reeds may issue
And fall, gently, on my breast;

That we may jump in the little
Boat, while water's voices whelm
All our feelings; that enchanted
I may drop my oars and helm;

That all charmed we may be floating
While moon's kindly light surrounds
Us, winds cause the reeds to rustle
And the waving water sounds.

But she does not come; abandoned,
Vainly I endure and sigh
Lonely, as the water lilies
On the blue lake ever lie.


Mihai Eminescu
(1876, Translated by Dimitrie Cuclin)

Monotony

One monotonous day follows another
identically monotonous. The same things
will happen to us again and again,
the same moments come and go.

A month passes by, brings another month.
Easy to guess what lies ahead:
all of yesterday's boredom.
And tomorrow ends up no longer like tomorrow.


Constantine P. Cavafy

*Constantine P. Cavafy, also known as Konstantin or Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis, or Kavaphes (Greek Κωνσταντίνος Π. Καβάφης) (April 29, 1863 – April 29, 1933) was a renowned Greek poet who lived in Alexandria and worked as a journalist and civil servant. In his poetry he examined critically some aspects of Christianity, patriotism, and homosexuality, though he was not always comfortable with his role as a nonconformist. He published 154 poems; dozens more remained incomplete or in sketch form. His most important poetry was written after his fortieth birthday.

José Saramago

"I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see."

(Jose Saramago)
(1922-2010)

The Sorrow of Love

The quarrel of the sparrow in the eaves,
The full round moon and the star-laden sky,
And the loud song of the ever-singing leaves,
Had hid away earth's old and weary cry.

And then you came with those red mournful lips,
And with you came the whole of the world's tears,
And all the sorrows of her labouring ships,
And all the burden of her myriad years.

And now the sparrows warring in the eaves,
The curd-pale moon, the white stars in the sky,
And the loud chaunting of the unquiet leaves,
Are shaken with earth's old and weary cry.

William Butler Yeats
(1892)

'The Sorrow of Love'


The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves,
The brilliant moon and all the milky sky,
And all that famous harmony of leaves,
Had blotted out man's image and his cry.

A girl arose that had red mournful lips
And seemed the greatness of the world in tears,
Doomed like Odysseus and the labouring ships
And proud as Priam murdered with his peers;

Arose, and on the instant clamorous eaves,
A climbing moon upon an empty sky,
And all that lamentation of the leaves,
Could but compose man's image and his cry.


William Butler Yeats
(Revised text of 1925)

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was born in Dublin. His father was a lawyer and a well-known portrait painter. Yeats was educated in London and in Dublin, but he spent his summers in the west of Ireland in the family's summer house at Connaught. The young Yeats was very much part of the fin de siècle in London; at the same time he was active in societies that attempted an Irish literary revival. His first volume of verse appeared in 1887, but in his earlier period his dramatic production outweighed his poetry both in bulk and in import. Together with Lady Gregory he founded the Irish Theatre, which was to become the Abbey Theatre, and served as its chief playwright until the movement was joined by John Synge. His plays usually treat Irish legends; they also reflect his fascination with mysticism and spiritualism. The Countess Cathleen (1892), The Land of Heart's Desire (1894), Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902), The King's Threshold (1904), and Deirdre (1907) are among the best known.

Yeats is one of the few writers whose greatest works were written after the award of the Nobel Prize. Whereas he received the Prize chiefly for his dramatic works, his significance today rests on his lyric achievement. His poetry, especially the volumes The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), The Tower (1928), The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), and Last Poems and Plays (1940), made him one of the outstanding and most influential twentieth-century poets writing in English. His recurrent themes are the contrast of art and life, masks, cyclical theories of life (the symbol of the winding stairs), and the ideal of beauty and ceremony contrasting with the hubbub of modern life.

"Nightbound"

"I sip the nights,
I'm the restless longings
of past sheperds & ancient bards

(an elated sleepless zombie
eternally wandering , am I? )

the spell of sleeping waves,
the tranquility seas, the mystery capes,
the arboreal secretive design,

I'm Orion's hunter and magi,
the nocturnal, inebriating wine,

I'm the one who drinks and weeps
amber beads at night,
some Gods' wink -
Hush! - but a dream ? -
I'm the moons’ transfigured light ...."


(F. Campanella)


"Nightbound"

Eu sorvo as noites
Eu sou inquietas saudades
De esquecidos pastores
E bardos primordiais

(um extático zumbi
Eternamente vagando, seria eu?)

a magia de ondas adormecidas,
os mares de tranqüilidade
os cabos misteriosos
o desenho incógnito das árvores

eu sou de Orion o caçador
E os magos , o vinho noturno
Inebriado

o que bebe e lacrimeja
gotas de âmbar à noite,

algum piscar dos deuses

- Silêncio! – apenas um sonho? –

eu sou da lua a luz transfigurada.


Fernando Campanella

Sonnet VIII

How many masks wear we, and undermasks,
Upon our countenance of soul, and when,
If for self-sport the soul itself unmasks,
Knows it the last mask off and the face plain?
The true mask feels no inside to the mask
But looks out of the mask by co-masked eyes.
Whatever conciousness begins the task
The task's accepted use to sleepness ties.
Like a child frighted by its mirrored faces,
Our souls, that children are, being thought-losing,
Foist otherness upon their seen grimaces
And get a whole world on their forgot causing;
And, when a thought would unmask our soul's masking,
Itself goes not unmasked to the unmasking.

Fernando Pessoa
In "35 Sonnets-(1.918)

"OISEAUX DE PASSAGE"

Les rêves, les grands rêves que moi toujours adore,
Les rêves couleur rose, les rêves éclatants;
Ainsi que les colombes un autre ciel cherchants
J’ai vu les ailes ouvertes, si belles que l’aurore.

Autour de la nature, autour de la profonde
Et merveilleuse mère des fleurs, des harmonies,
Les rêves éblouissants, remplis d’amour et vie,
Trouvaient de l’espoir le plus doré des mondes.

Hélas!... -- mais maintenant, par des chagrins, secrets,
L’amour, les étoiles et tout ce qu’il nous est
Chéri -- le beau soleil, la lune et les nuages;

Tout fut plongé d'abord’ plongé dans le mystère,
Avec de mon coeur la douce lumière,
Les rêves de mon âme -- uns* oiseaux de passage!...

Cruz e Souza
in "Derradeiro"

'MASCARADA'

Você me conhece?

(Frase dos mascarados de antigamente)


- Você me conhece?
- Não conheço não.
- Ah, como fui bela!
Tive grandes olhos,
que a paixão dos homens
(estranha paixão!)
Fazia maiores...
Fazia infinitos.
Diz: não me conheces?
- Não conheço não.


- Se eu falava, um mundo
Irreal se abria
à tua visão!
Tu não me escutavas:
Perdido ficavas
Na noite sem fundo
Do que eu te dizia...
Era a minha fala
Canto e persuasão...
Pois não me conheces?
- Não conheço não.
- Choraste em meus braços
- Não me lembro não.


- Por mim quantas vezes
O sono perdeste
E ciúmes atrozes
Te despedaçaram!


Por mim quantas vezes
Quase tu mataste,
Quase te mataste,
Quase te mataram!
Agora me fitas
E não me conheces?


- Não conheço não.
Conheço que a vida
É sonho, ilusão.
Conheço que a vida,
A vida é traição.


Manuel Bandeira

Manuel Carneiro de Sousa Bandeira Filho
Nasceu em Recife, 19 de abril de 1886,
faleceu no Rio de Janeiro, 13 de outubro de 1968.
Poeta, crítico literário e de arte, professor de literatura e tradutor brasileiro.

INTENTIONS

Have pity on the eyes morose
Wherein the soul its hope reveals;
On fated things that ne'er unclose,
And all who wait what night conceals.


Ripples that rock the spirit's lake!
Lilies that sway beneath the tide
To threads the eternal rhythms shake!
O powers that close to vision hide!


Behold, O Lord, unwonted flowers
Among the water-lilies white!
Dim hands of Thine angelic powers
Trouble the waters of my sight:


At mystic signs the buds unroll,
Shed on the waters from the skies,
And as the swans take flight my soul
Spreads the white pinions of its eyes.

*Maurice Maeterlinck
*Maurice Maeterlinck was a Belgian playwright, poet and essayist who became involved with Symbolism, a French literary movement which uses symbols to represent ideas and emotions.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1911.

Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard, Count Maeterlinck, was born in Ghent, Belgium on August 29, 1862. He studied law at the University of Ghent where he was profoundly influenced by Symbolism. His early works were not in plays but poetry. He published his first poem, The Rushes, when he was a 21-year-old university student.

His experimental work, although different in style prepared the way for playwrights Eugène Ionesco and Harold Pinter.
He died at the age of 86, on May 6, 1949.

“When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.” - Maurice Maeterlinck -

‘AQUARIUM’

Ow my desires no more, alas,
Summon my soul to my eyelids' brink,
For with its prayers that ebb and pass
It too must sink,

To lie in the depth of my closéd eyes;
Only the flowers of its weary breath
Like icy blooms to the surface rise,
Lilies of death.

Its lips are sealed, in the depths of woe,
And a world away, in the far-off gloom,
They sing of azure stems that grow
A mystic bloom.

But lo, its fingers--I have grown
Pallid beholding them, I who perceive
Them traces the marks its poor unblown
Lost lilies leave.

And I know it must die, for its hour is o'er;
Folding its impotent hands at last,
Hands too weary to pluck any more
The flowers of the past!

Maurice Maeterlinck
This English translation of 'Aquarium' is reprinted from Poems by Maurice Maeterlinck. Trans. Bernard Miall. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1915

Bouquet

Gather quickly
Out of darkness
All the songs you know
And throw them at the sun
Before they melt
Like snow


Langston Hughes
(1902 - 1967 / Missouri/US)

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.


*Theodore Roethke

*Theodore Roethke was born in Saginaw, Michigan, in 1908. As a child, he spent much time in the greenhouse owned by his father and uncle. His impressions of the natural world contained there would later profoundly influence the subjects and imagery of his verse. Roethke graduated magna cum laude from the University of Michigan in 1929. He later took a few graduate classes at Michigan and Harvard, but was unhappy in school. His first book, Open House (1941), took ten years to write and was critically acclaimed upon its publication. He went on to publish sparingly but his reputation grew with each new collection, including The Waking which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1954.Theodore Roethke died in Bainbridge Island in 1963, Washington.

In Youth

The stream is a glittering beautiful sight,
the trees full of twittering creatures.
I'm lying here lazy, an idle child
in the lap of my mother, Dame Nature.
From earth to heaven all there is
is a singing beauty and shining bliss.
I think there's a message for me from above
of wonderful days to enthral.
My blood is uneasy, I think I'm in love.
With whom? — Alas, I'm in love with it all!
I wish that heaven and earth, every part
in the shape of a girl, lay close to my heart!


*Gustaf Fröding
Translated by Henrik Aspán
In collaboration with Martin Allwood

*Born in August 22, 1860 - February 8, 1911) was a Swedish poet and writer, born in Alster outside Karlstad in Värmland. The family moved to Kristinehamn in the year 1867. He later studied at Uppsala University and worked as a journalist in Karlstad.
His poetry combines formal virtuosity with a sympathy for the ordinary, the neglected and the down-trodden. It is highly musical and lends itself to musical setting; as songs it has developed in to the much wider world of popular music and frequently been re-recorded by Swedish singers like Olle Adolphson and Monica Zetterlund.

La tristesse

L'âme triste est pareille
Au doux ciel de la nuit,
Quand l'astre qui sommeille
De la voûte vermeille
A fait tomber le bruit ;

Plus pure et plus sonore,
On y voit sur ses pas
Mille étoiles éclore,
Qu'à l'éclatante aurore
On n'y soupçonnait pas !

Des îles de lumière
Plus brillante qu'ici,
Et des mondes derrière,
Et des flots de poussière
Qui sont mondes aussi !

On entend dans l'espace
Les choeurs mystérieux
Ou du ciel qui rend grâce,
Ou de l'ange qui passe,
Ou de l'homme pieux !

Et pures étincelles
De nos âmes de feu,
Les prières mortelles
Sur leurs brûlantes ailes
Nous soulèvent un peu !

Tristesse qui m'inonde,
Coule donc de mes yeux,
Coule comme cette onde
Où la terre féconde
Voit un présent des cieux !

Et n'accuse point l'heure
Qui te ramène à Dieu !
Soit qu'il naisse ou qu'il meure,
Il faut que l'homme pleure
Ou l'exil, ou l'adieu !


Alphonse de LAMARTINE
(France)

'Le papillon'

Naître avec le printemps, mourir avec les roses,
Sur l'aile du zéphyr nager dans un ciel pur,
Balancé sur le sein des fleurs à peine écloses,
S'enivrer de parfums, de lumière et d'azur,
Secouant, jeune encor, la poudre de ses ailes,
S'envoler comme un souffle aux voûtes éternelles,
Voilà du papillon le destin enchanté!
Il ressemble au désir, qui jamais ne se pose,
Et sans se satisfaire, effleurant toute chose,
Retourne enfin au ciel chercher la volupté!


Alphonse de Lamartine
(Mâcon, 21 de outubro de 1790 - Paris, 28 de fevereiro de 1869)

Alone And Repentant

A friend I possess, whose whispers just said,
"God's peace!" to my night-watching mind.
When daylight is gone and darkness brings dread,
He ever the way can find.

He utters no word to smite and to score;
He, too, has known sin and its grief.
He heals with his look the place that is sore,
And stays till I have relief.

He takes for his own the deed that is such
That sorrows of heart increase.
He cleanses the wound with so gentle a touch,
The pain must give way to peace.

He followed each hope the heights that would scale
Reproached not a hapless descent.
He stands here just now, so mild, but so pale; --
In time he shall know what it meant.

Bjornstjerne Bjornson

*Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1832-1910) was the son of a Norwegian pastor. At school in Christiania (Oslo) Ibsen was one of his fellow students. Bjørnson participated early in the movement for a national Norwegian theatre and wrote some poetic plays which he did not publish. While a student, he became a literary critic for the Morgenbladet in 1854 and contributed criticism as well as stories to various other newspapers. In 1857 he succeeded in starting a literary career when he wrote the historical play Mellem slagene (Between the Battles) and became stage director at the Norwegian Theatre in Bergen.

Winter Song

Rain and wind, and wind and rain.
Will the Summer come again?
Rain on houses, on the street,
Wetting all the people's feet,
Though they run with might and main.
Rain and wind, and wind and rain.

Snow and sleet, and sleet and snow.
Will the Winter never go?
What do beggar children do
With no fire to cuddle to,
P'raps with nowhere warm to go?
Snow and sleet, and sleet and snow.

Hail and ice, and ice and hail,
Water frozen in the pail.
See the robins, brown and red,
They are waiting to be fed.
Poor dears, battling in the gale!
Hail and ice, and ice and hail.

Katherine Mansfield
*Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp Murry (14 October 1888 – 9 January 1923) was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand and wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield.

'Absence'

When my love was away,
Full three days were not sped,
I caught my fancy astray
Thinking if she were dead,

And I alone, alone:
It seem'd in my misery
In all the world was none
Ever so lone as I.

I wept; but it did not shame
Nor comfort my heart: away
I rode as I might, and came
To my love at close of day.

The sight of her still'd my fears,
My fairest-hearted love:
And yet in her eyes were tears:
Which when I question'd of,

'O now thou art come,' she cried,
''Tis fled: but I thought to-day
I never could here abide,
If thou wert longer away.'

Robert Seymour Bridges

'Nightingales'

Beautiful must be the mountains whence ye come,
And bright in the fruitful valleys the streams, wherefrom
Ye learn your song:
Where are those starry woods? O might I wander there,
Among the flowers, which in that heavenly air
Bloom the year long!

Nay, barren are those mountains and spent the streams:
Our song is the voice of desire, that haunts our dreams,
A throe of the heart,
Whose pining visions dim, forbidden hopes profound,
No dying cadence nor long sigh can sound,
For all our art.

Alone, aloud in the raptured ear of men
We pour our dark nocturnal secret; and then,
As night is withdrawn
From these sweet-springing meads and bursting boughs of May,
Dream, while the innumerable choir of day
Welcome the dawn.

Robert Seymour Bridges
(23 October 1844 – 21 April 1930) was an English poet, and poet laureate from 1913 to 1930.

Voices

("Dreams Voices Illusions"Florence Putterman)

Loved, idealized voices
of those who have died, or of those
lost for us like the dead.

Sometimes they speak to us in dreams;
sometimes deep in thought the mind hears them.

And, with their sound, for a moment return
sounds from our life's first poetry -
like distant music fading away at night.

Constantine P. Cavafy

Φωνές


Ιδανικές φωνές κι αγαπημένες
εκείνων που πέθαναν, ή εκείνων που είναι
για μας χαμένοι σαν τους πεθαμένους.

Κάποτε μες στα όνειρα μας ομιλούνε·
κάποτε μες στην σκέψι τες ακούει το μυαλό.

Και με τον ήχο των για μια στιγμή επιστρέφουν
ήχοι από την πρώτη ποίησι της ζωής μας --
σα μουσική, την νύχτα, μακρυνή, που σβύνει.

Κωνσταντίνος Π. Καβάφης (1904)

Herbsttag (Dia de outono)

Herr: es ist Zeit. Der Sommer war sehr groß.
Leg deinen Schatten auf die Sonnenuhren,
und auf den Fluren laß die Winde los.

Befiehl den letzten Früchten voll zu sein;
gieb ihnen noch zwei südlichere Tage,
dränge sie zur Vollendung hin und jage
die letzte Süße in den schweren Wein.

Wer jetzt kein Haus hat, baut sich keines mehr.
Wer jetzt allein ist, wird es lange bleiben,
wird wachen, lesen, lange Briefe schreiben
und wird in den Alleen hin und her
unruhig wandern, wenn die Blätter treiben.

Rainer Maria Rilke
(Paris,Sept.-21-1.902)

Autumn Day


Lord: it is time. The summer was immense.
Lay your shadow on the sundials
and let loose the wind in the fields.

Bid the last fruits to be full;
give them another two more southerly days,
press them to ripeness, and chase
the last sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now will not build one
anymore.
Whoever is alone now will remain so for a long
time,
will stay up, read, write long letters,
and wander the avenues, up and down,
restlessly, while the leaves are blowing.


Translated by Galway Kinnell and Hannah Liebmann,
"The Essential Rilke" (Ecco)


Autumn Day

Lord, it is time now,
for the summer has gone on
and gone on.
Lay your shadow along the sun-
dials and in the field
let the great wind blow free.
Command the last fruit
be ripe:
let it bow down the vine --
with perhaps two sun-warm days
more to force the last
sweetness in the heavy wine.

He who has no home
will not build one now.
He who is alone
will stay long
alone, will wake up,
read, write long letters,

and walk in the streets,
walk by in the
streets when the leaves blow.

Translated by John Logan,
"Homage to Rainer Maria Rilke,"


Dia de outono

Senhor, foi um verão imenso: é hora.
Estende as tuas sombras nos relógios
de sol e solta os ventos prado afora.

Instiga a sazonarem, com dois dias
a mais de sul, as frutas que, tardias,
conduzes rumo à plenitude, e apura,
no vinho denso, a última doçura.

Quem não tem lar já não terá; quem mora
sozinho há de velar e ler sozinho,
escrever longas cartas e, a caminho
de nada, há de trilhar ruas agora,
enquanto as folhas caem em torvelinho

Rainer Maria Rilke
Tradução:Nelson Ascher

Poem

(Foto by Antonio Carlos Januário - MG - Brazil)

Of that Heaven which is above the heavens what earthly poet ever did or ever will sing worthily? It is such as I will describe; for I must dare to speak the truth, when Truth is my theme. There abides the very Being with which true knowledge is concerned; the colorless, formless, intangible Essence visible only to mind, the pilot of the soul. ... Every soul which is capable of receiving the food proper to it rejoices at beholding Reality. ... She beholds Knowledge absolute, not in the form of generation or of relation, which men call existence, but Knowledge absolute in Existence absolute.


Poem / quote n° 3640 : Plato, (Athènes, 427 — id., 347 av. J.-C.), Classical Greek philosopher, founder of the Academy in Athens., Philosophy / Platonism
Source : Phaedrus, 247C-E; Jowett

LOVE ASLEEP

We reached the grove's deep shadow and there found
Cythera's son in sleep's sweet fetters bound;
Looking like ruddy apples on their tree;
No quiver and no bended bow had he;
These were suspended on a leafy spray.
Himself in cups of roses cradled lay,
Smiling in sleep; while from their flight in air,
The brown bees to his soft lips made repair,
To ply their waxen task and leave their honey there.

Poems attributed to the Greek philosopher, Plato.


This English translation, by Lord Neaves, of "Love Asleep" is reprinted from Greek Poets in English Verse. Ed. William Hyde Appleton. Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1893.

Considering The Snail

The snail pushes through a green
night, for the grass is heavy
with water and meets over
the bright path he makes, where rain
has darkened the earth's dark. He
moves in a wood of desire,

pale antlers barely stirring
as he hunts. I cannot tell
what power is at work, drenched there
with purpose, knowing nothing.
What is a snail's fury? All
I think is that if later

I parted the blades above
the tunnel and saw the thin
trail of broken white across
litter, I would never have
imagined the slow passion
to that deliberate progress.


Thom Gunn
(England, 1929 - 2004)

The Intoxicated Song

... "....Midnight is coming on:
so will I say something in your ears,
as that old bell says it in my ear,

... as secretly, as fearfully,
as warmly as that midnight bell tells it to me,
which has experienced more than one man:

... which hath already counted your fathers' painful heartbeats -
ah! ah! how it sighs! how in dreams it laughs!
the ancient, deep, deep midnight!

... Soft! Soft!
Then many a thing can be heard which may speak by day;
but now, in the cool air,
when all the clamour of your hearts, too, has grown still,

... now it speaks, now it is heard,
now it creeps into nocturnal, over-wakeful souls:
ah! ah! how it sighs! how in dreams it laughs!

... do you not hear,
how secretly, fearfully, warmly it speaks to you,
the ancient, deep, deep midnight?

O Man! Attend!"


Friedrich Nietzsche,
(1844-1900)
"Thus Spoke Zarathustra", The Intoxicated Song, R.J.Hollingdale translation

"Each Small Gleam Was A Voice"

"Each small gleam was a voice,
A lantern voice --
In little songs of carmine, violet, green, gold.
A chorus of colours came over the water;
The wondrous leaf-shadow no longer wavered,
No pines crooned on the hills,
The blue night was elsewhere a silence,
When the chorus of colours came over the water,
Little songs of carmine, violet, green, gold."


Stephen Maria Crane,
(1871-1900)
From "Each Small Gleam Was A Voice

"Daylight and Moonlight"

"In broad daylight, and at noon,
Yesterday I saw the moon
Sailing high, but faint and white,
As a schoolboy's paper kite.

In broad daylight, yesterday,
I read a poet's mystic lay;
And it seemed to me at most
As a phantom, or a ghost.

But at length the feverish day
Like a passion died away,
And the night, serene and still,
Fell on village, vale, and hill.

Then the moon, in all her pride,
Like a spirit glorified,
Filled and overflowed the night
With revelations of her light.

And the Poet's song again
Passed like music through my brain;
Night interpreted to me
All its grace and mystery."


Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
(1807-1882)

"New Year's Morning"

Only a night from old to new!
Only a night, and so much wrought!
The Old Year's heart all weary grew,
But said: The New Year rest has brought."
The Old Year's hopes its heart laid down,
As in a grave; but trusting, said:
"The blossoms of the New Year's crown
Bloom from the ashes of the dead."
The Old Year's heart was full of greed;
With selfishness it longed and ached,
And cried: "I have not half I need.
My thirst is bitter and unslaked.
But to the New Year's generous hand
All gifts in plenty shall return;
True love it shall understand;
By all y failures it shall learn.
I have been reckless; it shall be
Quiet and calm and pure of life.
I was a slave; it shall go free,
And find sweet pace where I leave strife."

Only a night from old to new!
Never a night such changes brought.
The Old Year had its work to do;
No New Year miracles are wrought.

Always a night from old to new!
Night and the healing balm of sleep!
Each morn is New Year's morn come true,
Morn of a festival to keep.
All nights are sacred nights to make
Confession and resolve and prayer;
All days are sacred days to wake
New gladness in the sunny air.
Only a night from old to new;
Only a sleep from night to morn.
The new is but the old coem true;
Each sunrise sees a new year born."


Helen Hunt Jackson,
(1830-1885)

The Old House

"In through the porch and up the silent stair;
Little is changed, I know so well the ways;--
Here, the dead came to meet me; it was there
The dream was dreamed in unforgotten days.

But who is this that hurries on before,
A flitting shade the brooding shades among?--
She turned,--I saw her face,--O God, it wore
The face I used to wear when I was young!

I thought my spirit and my heart were tamed
To deadness; dead the pangs that agonise.
The old grief springs to choke me,--I am shamed
Before that little ghost with eager eyes.

O turn away, let her not see, not know!
How should she bear it, how should understand?
O hasten down the stairway, haste and go,
And leave her dreaming in the silent land."


Amy Levy,
(1861–1889)

'Spleen'

I was not sorrowful, I could not weep,
And all my memories were put to sleep.

I watched the river grow more white and strange,
All day till evening I watched it change.

All day till evening I watched the rain
Beat wearily upon the window pane.

I was not sorrowful, but only tired
Of everything that ever I desired.

Her lips, her eyes, all day became to me
The shadow of a shadow utterly.

All day mine hunger for her heart became
Oblivion, until the evening came,

And left me sorrowful, inclined to weep,
With all my memories that could not sleep.


Ernest Dowson
in; Verses
Originally published 1896

Do you remember still the falling stars

Do you remember still the falling stars
that like swift horses through the heavens raced
and suddenly leaped across the hurdles
of our wishes--do you recall? And we
did make so many! For there were countless numbers
of stars: each time we looked above we were
astounded by the swiftness of their daring play,
while in our hearts we felt safe and secure
watching these brilliant bodies disintegrate,
knowing somehow we had survived their fall.

Rainer Maria Rilke

In the Morning of Life

In the morning of life, when its cares are unknown,
And its pleasures in all their new lustre begin,
When we live in a bright-beaming world of our own,
And the light that surrounds us is all from within;
Oh 'tis not, believe me, in that happy time
We can love, as in hours of less transport we may; --
Of our smiles, of our hopes, 'tis the gay sunny prime,
But affection is truest when these fade away.

When we see the first glory of youth pass us by,
Like a leaf on the stream that will never return,
When our cup, which had sparkled with pleasure so high,
First tastes of the other, the dark-flowing urn;
Then, then in the time when affection holds sway
With a depth and a tenderness joy never knew;
Love, nursed among pleasures, is faithless as they,
But the love born of Sorrow, like Sorrow, is true.

In climes full of sunshine, though splendid the flowers,
Their sighs have no freshness, their odour no worth;
'Tis the cloud and the mist of our own Isle of showers
That call the rich spirit of fragrancy forth.
So it is not 'mid splendour, prosperity, mirth,
That the depth of Love's generous spirit appears;
To the sunshine of smiles it may first owe its birth,
But the soul of its sweetness is drawn out by tears.

Thomas Moore
(1779 - 1852 / Dublin / Ireland)