"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.