Meus Poemas Favoritos II

O HAVER

2012-01-16T16:38:00.000-03:00

Resta, acima de tudo, essa capacidade de ternura

Essa intimidade perfeita com o silêncio

Resta essa voz íntima pedindo perdão por tudo

- Perdoai-os! porque eles não têm culpa de ter nascido...

Resta esse antigo respeito pela noite, esse falar baixo

Essa mão que tateia antes de ter, esse medo

De ferir tocando, essa forte mão de homem

Cheia de mansidão para com tudo quanto existe.

Resta essa imobilidade, essa economia de gestos

Essa inércia cada vez maior diante do Infinito

Essa gagueira infantil de quem quer exprimir o inexprimível

Essa irredutível recusa à poesia não vivida.

Resta essa comunhão com os sons, esse sentimento

Da matéria em repouso, essa angústia da simultaneidade

Do tempo, essa lenta decomposição poética

Em busca de uma só vida, uma só morte, um só Vinicius.

Resta esse coração queimando como um círio

Numa catedral em ruínas, essa tristeza

Diante do cotidiano; ou essa súbita alegria

Ao ouvir passos na noite que se perdem sem história.

Resta essa vontade de chorar diante da beleza

Essa cólera em face da injustiça e o mal-entendido

Essa imensa piedade de si mesmo, essa imensa

Piedade de si mesmo e de sua força inútil.

Resta esse sentimento de infância subitamente desentranhado

De pequenos absurdos, essa capacidade

De rir à toa, esse ridículo desejo de ser útil

E essa coragem para comprometer-se sem necessidade.

Resta essa distração, essa disponibilidade, essa vagueza

De quem sabe que tudo já foi como será no vir-a-ser

E ao mesmo tempo essa vontade de servir, essa

Contemporaneidade com o amanhã dos que não tiveram ontem nem hoje.

Resta essa faculdade incoercível de sonhar

De transfigurar a realidade, dentro dessa incapacidade

De aceitá-la tal como é, e essa visão

Ampla dos acontecimentos, e essa impressionante

E desnecessária presciência, e essa memória anterior

De mundos inexistentes, e esse heroísmo

Estático, e essa pequenina luz indecifrável

A que às vezes os poetas dão o nome de esperança.

Resta esse desejo de sentir-se igual a todos

De refletir-se em olhares sem curiosidade e sem memória

Resta essa pobreza intrínseca, essa vaidade

De não querer ser príncipe senão do seu reino.

Resta esse diálogo cotidiano com a morte, essa curiosidade

Pelo momento a vir, quando, apressada

Ela virá me entreabrir a porta como uma velha amante

Mas recuará em véus ao ver-me junto à bem-amada...

Resta esse constante esforço para caminhar dentro do labirinto

Esse eterno levantar-se depois de cada queda

Essa busca de equilíbrio no fio da navalha

Essa terrível coragem diante do grande medo, e esse medo

Infantil de ter pequenas coragens.

15/04/1962

Vinicius de Moraes

A poesia acima foi extraída do livro "Jardim Noturno - Poemas Inéditos", Companhia das Letras - São Paulo, 1993, pág. 17.

Three—With the Moon and His Shadow

2012-01-03T13:51:00.000-03:00

With a jar of wine I sit by the flowering trees.
I drink alone, and where are my friends?
Ah, the moon above looks down on me;
I call and lift my cup to his brightness.
And see, there goes my shadow before me.
Ho! We're a party of three, I say,—
Though the poor moon can't drink,
And my shadow but dances around me,
We're all friends to-night,
The drinker, the moon and the shadow.
Let our revelry be meet for the spring time!

I sing, the wild moon wanders the sky.
I dance, my shadow goes tumbling about.
While we're awake, let us join in carousal;
Only sweet drunkenness shall ever part us.
Let us pledge a friendship no mortals know,
And often hail each other at evening
Far across the vast and vaporous space!

Li Po

Tema sem variação

2011-11-08T08:18:00.000-03:00

Sequer apago as passadas
deste meu vagar sozinho,
sozinho em tantas estradas:
triturador de caminhos,
move-me um remoinho
de frescas águas passadas.

Geir Campos
In Canto Claro, 1957

Canto Noturno I

2011-07-28T16:11:00.000-03:00

Mel e medo

Sou avesso

Orla e rumo

Meu destino.

Chuva e outono

Com a morte

Brilho e flor

Com a vida.

O que fiz

O que ardi

O que sei

O que sou:

Um incêndio

Que se apaga

Uma canção

Que se acaba.

Stefan George*

(Do livro “TAPETE DA VIDA E CANÇÕES DE SONHO E MORTE COM UM PRELÚDIO” (1899)

Stefan Anton George

(Bingen, Hesse, 12 de julho, 1868 – Locarno, 4 de dezembro, 1933) foi um tradutor e poeta Alemão.

Viveu em Paris, encontrando-se entre os escritores e artistas que frequentavam os serões das terças-feiras do poeta Stéphane Mallarmé. Começou a publicar poesia na década de 1890, quando ainda não tinha 30 anos de idade. George fundou e editou a importante revista literária Blätter für die Kunst. Também esteve no centro de um influente círculo literário e académico conhecido como Georgekreis, que incluía um grande número dos jovens escritores da época (como, por exemplo, Friedrich Gundolf and Ludwig Klages). Para além de partilhar os seus interesses culturais, o círculo artístico reflectia sobre temas místicos e políticos. George conhecia e mantinha uma relação de amizade com a "Condessa Boémia" de Schwabing, Fanny zu Reventlow, que por vezes satirizava o grupo pelas suas opiniões e actividades melodramáticas. George era, politicamente, de um conservadorismo extremo. Era homossexual e liderou e exortou o círculo dos seus jovens amigos a levar uma vida celibatária.

Em 1914, logo no início da Primeira Grande Guerra, previu um final triste para a Alemanha e, entre 1914 e 1916, escreveu um poema em tons muito pessimistas, intitulado Der Krieg (A Guerra). O desenlace da guerra viu confirmados os seus piores receios.

Em 1933, após a tomada de poder pelos Nazis, Joseph Goebbels ofereceu-lhe a presidência de uma nova Academia de Artes a ser criada, o que ele recusou, tendo-se também mantido afastado das celebrações oficiais do seu 65º aniversário. Viajou para a Suíça onde viria a morrer perto de Locarno. Após a sua morte, o seu corpo foi enterrado antes que uma delegação do governo Nacional-Socialista tivesse tempo de chegar.

(FOUR QUARTETS) Little Gidding

2011-07-15T12:45:00.001-03:00

Part V

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this
Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

T.S. Eliot
- Little Gidding, No. 4 of "Four Quartets"
(No. 4 of 'Four Quartets')

Dieppe

2011-07-08T12:14:00.001-03:00

1.

de novo o último refluxo
os pedregulhos mortos
a meia-volta e após as escalas
rumo à antiga iluminação

2.

eu sou aquele curso de areia que passa
entre o cascalho e a duna
a chuva do verão chove sobre minha vida
sobre mim minha vida me vai me caça
e termina no dia da sua iniciação

momento querido eu te vejo
nesta cortina de névoa que desmancha
quando eu já não piso nestas longas soleiras movediças
e vivo o tempo de uma porta
que se abre e se fecha

3.

o que eu faria deste mundo sem rosto sem perguntas
onde ser não dura mais que um instante onde cada instante
flui pelo vazio o esquecimento de ter sido
sem esta onda onde no fim
corpo e sombra juntos são tragados
o que eu faria sem este silêncio garganta dos murmúrios
ofegando furiosos para o salvamento para o amor
sem este céu que se eleva
da poeira do seu lastro

o que eu faria eu faria como ontem e como hoje
cuidando pela minha janela se eu não estou só
a passear e a virar pra longe de toda a vida
dentro de um espaço fantoche
sem voz entre as vozes
trancadas aqui comigo

4.

eu quero que o meu amor morra
que ele chova sobre o cemitério
e ruelas em que eu vá
lamentando a que pensou me amar

Samuel Beckett
Tradução do original ao português, auxiliado pela versão em inglês,
Adriandos Delima

Dieppe

«Again the last ebb
the dead shingle
the turning then the steps
toward the lighted town

my way is in the sand
flowing between the shingle and the dune
the summer rain rains on my life, on me
my life harrying fleeing
to its beginning to this end

my peace is there in the receding mist
when I may cease
from treading these long shifting thresholds
and live the space of a door
that opens and shuts

what would I do without this world faceless incurious
where to be lasts but an instant
where every instant spills in the void
the ignorance of having been without
this wave where in the end
body and shadow together are engulfed

what would I do without this silence where the murmurs die
the paintings the frenzies toward succour towards love
without this sky that soars
above it's ballast dust

what would I do what I did yesterday and the day before
peering out of my deadlight looking for another
wandering like me eddying far from all the living
in a convulsive space
among the voices voiceless
that throng my hiddenness

I would like my love to die
and the rain to be falling on the graveyard
and on me walking the streets
mourning the first and last to love me»

SAMUEL BECKETT / 1948

A DREAM

2011-06-22T10:31:00.001-03:00

(Tela by Katerina Belkina)

In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed-
But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.

Ah! what is not a dream by day
To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray
Turned back upon the past?

That holy dream- that holy dream,
While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam
A lonely spirit guiding.

What though that light, thro' storm and night,
So trembled from afar-
What could there be more purely bright
In Truth's day-star?

Edgar Allan Poe

A Tear And A Smile

2011-06-05T21:33:00.004-03:00

(Pedra do Baú- by Antônio Carlos Januário - MG - Brazil)

I would not exchange the sorrows of my heart
For the joys of the multitude.
And I would not have the tears that sadness makes
To flow from my every part turn into laughter.

I would that my life remain a tear and a smile.

A tear to purify my heart and give me understanding
Of life's secrets and hidden things.
A smile to draw me nigh to the sons of my kind and
To be a symbol of my glorification of the gods.

A tear to unite me with those of broken heart;
A smile to be a sign of my joy in existence.

I would rather that I died in yearning and longing than that I live Weary and despairing.

I want the hunger for love and beauty to be in the
Depths of my spirit,for I have seen those who are
Satisfied the most wretched of people.
I have heard the sigh of those in yearning and Longing, and it is sweeter than the sweetest melody.

With evening's coming the flower folds her petals
And sleeps, embracingher longing.
At morning's approach she opens her lips to meet
The sun's kiss.

The life of a flower is longing and fulfilment.
A tear and a smile.

The waters of the sea become vapor and rise and come
Together and area cloud.

And the cloud floats above the hills and valleys
Until it meets the gentle breeze, then falls weeping
To the fields and joins with brooks and rivers to Return to the sea, its home.

The life of clouds is a parting and a meeting.
A tear and a smile.

And so does the spirit become separated from
The greater spirit to move in the world of matter
And pass as a cloud over the mountain of sorrow
And the plains of joy to meet the breeze of death
And return whence it came.

To the ocean of Love and Beauty----to God.

Khalil Gibran

Como é que a Solidão Hei-de Ir Medindo?

2011-05-23T18:50:00.002-03:00

Como é que a solidão hei-de ir medindo?
desse-me os golpes de uso inda esta dor
um a um sua nudez a sobrepor
que o ritmo sem nome a foi vestindo

mas sofro agora o tempo nu saindo
numa levada sem nenhum teor
gasto caudal do meu rio interior
nem chora o peito por mais gritos vindo

Quando é que é novo ano na amargura
quando volto a chegar-me à desventura
que me faz falta em ocos dias vis.

ah quando é que arde escura em cores febris
à testa do ano como a vi na altura
do agosto em chamas funda cicatriz?

Walter Benjamin,
in "Sonetos"
Tradução de Vasco Graça Moura

Haicai - Delores Pires -

2011-05-18T11:01:00.002-03:00

Doce encantamento:
o mundo, o carinho, a paz
cabem num abraço.

Delores Pires

ETERNA CHUVA

2011-05-17T18:17:00.003-03:00

Chove lá fora e a chuva apaga a poeira
Da minha estrada que não tem mais fim!
Seria bom que pela vida inteira
Essa chuva caísse sobre mim!

Sinto que a minha estrada sem palmeira,
Deserta, vasta e prolongada assim,
Impulsiona a minha alma sem canseira,
Para o mundo esquisito do senfim!

E eu marcho resoluto para a frente!
Cai-me a chuva nos ombros, de repente
Eu mais apresso a minha caminhada!

E assim prossigo nesse sonho eterno,
Sob a sentença de um constante inverno,
Sem promessas de sol na minha estrada!

Jansen Filho
In: Obras Completas

ESCOTOMAS

2011-05-08T15:29:00.002-03:00

Não sei
o que é um espírito. Ninguém
conhece a fundo a luz do seu abismo
enquanto o vento, à noite, vai abrindo
as infinitas portas de uma casa
vazia. A minha voz
procura responder a outra voz,
ao choro dos espectros que celebram
a sua missa negra, o seu eterno
sobressalto. Num ermo
da cidade magoada escuto ainda
o rumor de um oráculo,
a febre de um adeus que se prolonga
no estertor dos ponteiros de um relógio,
nesse ritmo feroz, na pulsação
do meu sangue exilado que recorda
um abrigo divino. pai nosso, que estás
entre o céu e a terra, conduz-me
ao precipício onde hibernou a alma
e ensina-me a romper a madrugada
como se a minha face fosse
um estilhaço da tua
e nela derretessem, por milagre,
estas gotas de gelo ou de cristal
que não sabem ser lágrimas.

Fernando Pinto do Amaral
(Portugal)

The Tears of Heaven

2011-05-06T11:13:00.002-03:00

Heaven weeps above the earth all night till morn,
In darkness weeps, as all ashamed to weep,
Because the earth hath made her state forlorn
With selfwrought evils of unnumbered years,
And doth the fruit of her dishonour reap.
And all the day heaven gathers back her tears
Into her own blue eyes so clear and deep,
And showering down the glory of lightsome day,
Smiles on the earth's worn brow to win her if she may.

Lord Alfred Tennyson

Tears, Idle Tears

2011-05-06T10:55:00.003-03:00

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more!

Lord Alfred Tennyson

Inutilmente

2011-05-04T20:05:00.002-03:00

Floriram os ipês ali da praça
e, quando a gente passa,
-porque o vento as derruba em profusão –
vai esmagando flores pelo chão.

Como ciclópica oficina
pulsa, ao redor, a vida citadina.
Arranha-céus fugindo para o alto
numa arquitetura funcional;
automóveis rodando sobre o asfalto
e, de fundas angústias carregada,
a multidão correndo, alucinada,
vazia de Ideal.

Babélica, apressada,
toda essa gente não repara em nada:
não vê, em cima, a loira floração,
nem vê que pisa em flores pelo chão.

Os ipês se enfloraram, mas em vão . . .
Sua mensagem clara, colorida,
-um hino de louvor ao Belo e à Vida –
fica rolando, inútil, pelo chão,
fica, inútil, rolando pelo ar,
pois os homens não sabem mais sonhar.

Graciette Salmon
In: A Vida Por Dentro

Um poema de Graça Pires (Portugal)

2011-04-08T17:58:00.002-03:00

Contra o silencio lemos a meia voz: ponham laços
de crepe nos pescoços das pombas da cidade.
Que os policias de transito usem luvas pretas
de algodão. Voltamos a ler e as palavras de Auden
ecoam como um réquiem pelos sonhos
profanados em mãos funestas.
Depois não sabemos como evitar o luto,
ou culpa, ou a solidão.

Graça Pires
In: A incidência da luz

O tempo

2011-03-24T23:11:00.002-03:00

"E o corvo disse: "Nunca mais."
(Edgard Poe)

O tempo passou por mim,
Alterando os meus planos,
Modificando as minhas aspirações,
Fazendo da minha vida
E de todos os meus sonhos
E de todos os meus amores
Uma coisa medíocre.

Pingou banalidade e lugares-comuns,
Na minha inteligência,
Na minha alma
E no meu coração.
Alterou a forma do meu corpo,
A estrutura das minhas células,
As linhas do meu rosto,
As crenças da minha ingenuidade
E o meu próprio caráter.

E o tempo, que não respeitou nada,
Nem os meus defeitos
Nem as qualidades dos outros -
Esse tempo que deteriorou todas as alegrias
E tornou ridículos todos os martírios,
O tempo todo-poderoso
Não conseguiu ensinar-me
A arte de esquecer.

Alba Saltiel Bianco
In Música do Vento

Do blog da amiga Dione Coppi

The Island

2011-02-10T19:34:00.002-03:00

The next tide will erase the way through the mudflats,
and everything will be again equal on all sides;
but the small, far-out island already has its
eyes closed; bewildered, the dike draws a circle

around its inhabitants who were born
into a sleep in which many worlds
are silently confused, for they rarely speak,
and every phrase is like an epitaph

for something washed up on shore, unknown,
that inexplicably comes to them and remains.
And so it is, from childhood on, with everything

described in their gaze: things not applying to them,
too big, too merciless, sent back too many times,
which exaggerates even more their aloneness.

Rainer Maria Rilke

TRISTEZA

2011-02-08T20:14:00.001-03:00

Falo-me em versos tristes,
Entrego-me a versos cheios
De névoa e de luar;
E esses meus versos tristes
São tênues, céleres veios
Que esse vago luar
Se deixa pratear.

Sou alma em tristes cantos,
Tão tristes como as águas
Que uma castelã vê
Perderem-se em recantos
Que ela em soslaio, de pé,
No seu castelo de prantos
Perenemente vê. . .
Assim as minhas magoas não domo
Cantam-me não sei como
E eu canto-as não sei porquê.

6-7-1910

Fernando Pessoa
Em Poesia do Eu
- Obra essencial de Fernando Pessoa
Editora Assírio & Alvim – 2006 –

Um poema de Nelly Sachs

2011-01-19T11:18:00.002-03:00

Escuro ciciar do vento
na seara
A vítima pronta ao sofrimento
As raízes estão caladas
mas as espigas
sabem muitas línguas maternas -

E o sal no mar
chora na distância
A pedra é uma existência de fogo
e os elementos puxam pelas cadias
pra a união
quando a escrita espectral das nuvens
recolhe imagens primevas

Mistério na fronteira da morte
«Põe o dedo nos lábios:
Silêncio Silêncio Silêncio» -

Nelly Sachs
(de Enigmas em Brasa / Gluhende Ratsel, incluído em Spate Gedichte, Francoforte do Meno, 1965)
(Poema incluídos em Poemas de Nelly Sachs, antologia, versão portuguesa e introdução de Paulo Quintela, Portugália, 1966)

Night, night

2011-01-19T11:02:00.003-03:00

(Photo by Antônio Carlos Januário - MG - Brazil)

Night, night,
that you may not shatter in fragments
now when the time sinks with the ravenous suns
of martyrdom
in your sea-covered depths─
the moons of death
drag the falling roof of earth
into the congealed blood of your silence.

Night, night,
once you were the bride of mysteries
adorned with lilies of shadow─
In your dark glass sparkled
the mirage of all who yearn
and love had set its morning rose
to blossom before you─
You were once the oracular mouth
of dream painting and mirrored the beyond.

Night, night,
now you are the graveyard
for the terrible shipwreck of a star─
time sinks speechless in you
with its sign:
The falling stone
and the flag of smoke.

Nelly Sachs
─Translated from the German by Ruth and Matthew Mead
(from Und neimand weiss weiter, 1957 -

Born as Leonie Sachs in Schöneberg, Germany in 1891, she was educated at home due to her frail health. She showed early signs of talent as a dancer, but her protective parents did not encourage her to pursue a profession. She grew up as a very sheltered, introverted young woman and never married. She pursued an extensive correspondence, and was a friend of Selma Lagerlöf and Hilde Domin. As the Nazis took power, she became increasingly terrified, at one point losing the power of speech, as she would remember in verse: "When the great terror came/I fell dumb." Sachs fled with her aged mother to Sweden in 1940. Her friendship with Lagerlöf had saved her life and that of her mother when shortly before her own death Lagerlöf intervened with the Swedish royal family to secure their release from Germany. Sachs and her mother finally escaped on the last airplane flight to leave Nazi Germany for Sweden, a week before Sachs was scheduled to report to a concentration camp.

Living in a tiny two-room apartment in Stockholm, Sachs cared alone for her mother for many years, and supported their existence by translations between Swedish and German. After her mother's death, Sachs suffered several nervous breakdowns characterized by hallucinations, paranoia, and delusions of persecution by Nazis, and she spent a number of years in a mental institution. She continued to write even while hospitalized. She eventually recovered well enough to live on her own again, though her stability would always be fragile. Her worst breakdown was ostensibly precipitated by hearing German speech during a trip to Switzerland to accept a literary prize. However, she maintained a forgiving attitude toward a younger generation of Germans, and corresponded with many German-speaking writers of the postwar period, including Hans Magnus Enzensberger and Ingeborg Bachmann.

When, with Shmuel Yosef Agnon, she was awarded the 1966 Nobel Prize in Literature, she observed that Agnon represented Israel whereas "I represent the tragedy of the Jewish people."

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

On Death

2010-12-23T09:23:00.001-03:00

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

2010-11-29T10:28:00.001-03:00

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

2010-10-24T19:16:00.001-03:00

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'

2010-09-24T23:34:00.002-03:00

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

Delores Pires - Clair de Lune

***

2010-09-16T20:22:00.003-03:00

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

(Fernando Campanella)

Tanka

2010-08-30T11:19:00.002-03:00

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

***

2010-08-29T11:31:00.003-03:00

(Foto by Fernando Campanella)

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

(Fernando Campanella)

Autumn Sadness

2010-08-26T21:31:00.001-03:00

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"

2010-08-24T17:53:00.002-03:00

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

2010-08-16T16:36:00.002-03:00

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"

2010-08-12T10:55:00.003-03:00

(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

2010-08-12T10:39:00.003-03:00

(Foto by Fernando Campanella)

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

(Fernando Campanella)

'FALLING STAR'

2010-08-12T10:37:00.004-03:00

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'

2010-08-08T19:16:00.002-03:00

(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'

2010-08-04T22:21:00.002-03:00

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...

2010-07-28T18:10:00.002-03:00

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

2010-07-21T17:07:00.002-03:00

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

2010-07-18T18:18:00.001-03:00

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

2010-07-12T17:05:00.004-03:00

(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

2010-06-26T10:19:00.002-03:00

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

2010-06-19T12:09:00.004-03:00

"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

2010-06-09T15:59:00.003-03:00

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"

2010-06-08T16:51:00.002-03:00

"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

2010-06-05T17:38:00.002-03:00

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"

2010-05-30T16:56:00.002-03:00

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'

2010-05-28T18:49:00.006-03:00

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

2010-05-22T12:11:00.004-03:00

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’

2010-05-22T11:31:00.002-03:00

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

2010-05-17T17:48:00.003-03:00

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

2010-05-17T17:27:00.002-03:00

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

2010-05-17T16:59:00.002-03:00

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

2010-05-11T12:16:00.001-03:00

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'

2010-05-11T12:11:00.001-03:00

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

2010-05-11T12:02:00.002-03:00

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

2010-05-05T17:53:00.001-03:00

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'

2010-04-25T20:15:00.002-03:00

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'

2010-04-25T20:08:00.002-03:00

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

2010-04-25T13:08:00.004-03:00

("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)

2010-04-22T10:02:00.004-03:00

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

2010-04-14T17:30:00.003-03:00

(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

2010-04-14T17:24:00.002-03:00

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

2010-04-12T00:01:00.002-03:00

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

2010-03-29T19:45:00.002-03:00

... "....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"

2010-03-29T19:30:00.002-03:00

"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"

2010-03-29T19:22:00.002-03:00

"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"

2010-03-29T19:16:00.003-03:00

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

2010-03-29T19:09:00.003-03:00

"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'

2010-03-29T19:03:00.002-03:00

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

2010-03-29T18:52:00.002-03:00

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

2010-03-23T12:01:00.001-03:00

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)

Come O'er the Sea

2010-03-23T11:36:00.003-03:00

Come o'er the sea,
Maiden with me,
Mine through sunshine, storm, and snows;
Seasons may roll,
But the true soul
Burns the same, where'er it goes.
Let fate frown on, so we love and part not;
'Tis life where thou art, 'tis death were thou are not.
Then come o'er the sea,
Maiden with me,
Come wherever the wild wind blows;
Seasons may roll,
But the true soul
Burns the same, where'er it goes.

Was not the sea
Made for the Free,
Land for courts and chains alone?
Here we are slaves,
But, on the waves,
Love and Liberty's all our own.
No eye to watch, and no tongue to wound us
All earth forgot, and all heaven around us --
Then come o'er the sea,
Maiden, with me,
Mine through sunshine, storms, and snows
Seasons may roll,
But the true soul
Burns the same, where'er it goes.

Thomas Moore
(1779 - 1852 / Dublin / Ireland)

''At the Mid Hour of Night''

2010-03-23T11:28:00.001-03:00

AT the mid hour of night, when stars are weeping, I fly
To the lone vale we loved, when life shone warm in thine eye;
And I think oft, if spirits can steal from the regions of air
To revisit past scenes of delight, thou wilt come to me there,
And tell me our love is remember'd even in the sky.

Then I sing the wild song it once was rapture to hear,
When our voices commingling breathed like one on the ear;
And as Echo far off through the vale my sad orison rolls,
I think, O my love! 'tis thy voice from the Kingdom of Souls
Faintly answering still the notes that once were so dear.

Thomas Moore.
(1779–1852)
(Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.)

The Spring of the Year

2010-03-23T11:26:00.001-03:00

Gone were but the winter cold,
And gone were but the snow,
I could sleep in the wild woods
Where primroses blow.

Cold 's the snow at my head,

And cold at my feet;
And the finger of death 's at my e'en,
Closing them to sleep.

Let none tell my father
Or my mother so dear,
I'll meet them both in heaven
At the spring of the year.

Allan Cunningham
(1784–1842)
(Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.)

'The Grave of Love'

2010-03-23T11:25:00.002-03:00

I DUG, beneath the cypress shade,
What well might seem an elfin's grave;
And every pledge in earth I laid,
That erst thy false affection gave.

I press'd them down the sod beneath;
I placed one mossy stone above;
And twined the rose's fading wreath
Around the sepulchre of love.

Frail as thy love, the flowers were dead
Ere yet the evening sun was set:
But years shall see the cypress spread,
Immutable as my regret.

Thomas Love Peacock.
( 1785–1866)
9Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900)

When we Two parted

2010-03-23T11:22:00.001-03:00

[...]

In secret we met—
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?
With silence and tears.

George Gordon Byron,
(Lord Byron. 1788–1824)

'We'll go no more a-roving'

2010-03-23T11:20:00.001-03:00

SO, we'll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon.

Lord Byron.
(1788–1824)
(Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.)

É Outono

2010-03-10T00:07:00.001-03:00

Faço um barco de papel e embarco, rumo às cenas
baralhadas de um sonho qualquer.
É outono e não sei dizer quem sou ou o que quero ser.
Os meus olhos são rios de palavras afogadas,
onde só posso ver a minha imagem disfarçada de mim.
Percorro então, uma a uma, as horas por viver
e descubro um arco-íris na minha boca
a gritar uma insónia íntima.

Dentro do meu sono ainda me perturba
a tua imagem, miragem do meu deserto
vencido, demora da minha espera.
Era feito de mármore o silêncio
dos teus olhos e por ele escorriam
as palavras que eu dizia, como se fossem água.
Esse silêncio doeu na minha voz,
quando as minhas mãos violaram os gestos
e, entre nós, ficou intacto o diálogo.
Sei agora a cor exacta do vinho
com que brindei à primavera em nome
da presença que tu eras e hoje, ao recordar-te,
sublinhei o sentido dos sonhos e do vento.
Foi o tempo em que a neve presente no teu rosto
gelou os meus lábios até à transparência.

Graça Pires
De Outono: lugar fragil, 1993

Le mimosa

2010-02-25T11:21:00.002-03:00

Sur fond d'azur le voici, comme un personnage de la comédie italienne, avec un rien d'histrionisme saugrenu, poudré comme Pierrot, dans son costume à pois jaunes, le mimosa.
Mais ce n'est pas un arbuste lunaire : plutôt solaire, multisolaire…
Un caractère d'une naïve gloriole, vite découragé.
Chaque grain n'est aucunement lisse, mais formé de poils soyeux, un astre si l'on veut, étoilé au maximum.
Les feuilles ont l'air de grandes plumes, très légères et cependant très accablées d'elles-mêmes ; plus attendrissantes dès lors que d'autres palmes, par là aussi très distinguées. Et pourtant, il ya quelque chose actuellement vulgaire dans l'idée du mimosa ; c'est une fleur qui vient d'être vulgarisée.
… Comme dans tamaris il y a tamis, dans mimosa il y a mima.

Francis Ponge, La Rage de l'expression, 1952
(Extrait du livre)

Pássaros

2010-02-22T19:42:00.002-03:00

(Foto by Fernando Campanella)

A primavera de New England
não traz seus pássaros à minha janela.
Mas por que penso naqueles cantos
se nem os pássaros de meu velho rio
ou de minhas conhecidas árvores
vêm ao meu jardim cantar?

Só cantam para si próprios,
o martim- pescador, a corrila ,
o joão-de-barro atribulado.

Pensando melhor, nem mesmo pardais,
nenhum pio, nenhum bemol acasalado
conseguem meu dia despertar.
Ficam por si, longínquos, os canários
e os bem-te-vis nas cercanias .

Como é triste acordar
daquelas ternuras surdo, descantado.
como é áspero raspar do dia o aço.
ranger roldanas de hábitos e ossos.

Cantem para si, para Deus
ou para quem os consiga ouvir
o exótico robin , o cuco e a cotovia.
Nenhum trinado, nenhum grasnar,
vêm alcançar meus ouvidos ruidosos.

Ah, vejam, sou mesmo um rei nu,
um moedor de pedras,
sou aquele imperador da China
que tão pobre era sem seu pássaro -
aquele pobre mandarim ,
a solidão, meu triste rabicho,
a ausência, esta enorme vassala de mim.

Fernando Campanella, 1987

DISAGREEMENT

2010-02-22T19:24:00.002-03:00

Steps with no return
inflame memory´s homelessness:
streets in silence
ignore you and resign
from immune photographs

What remains
is an ironic truce with the past
a vague poem
awake nonetheless
against the day´s edges

Júlio Castañon Guimarães
Translation by Steven White

Outono

2010-02-22T10:58:00.002-03:00

As folhas caem, de muito longe
envelhecidas no céu, em longínquos jardins,
caem: é como um gesto de recusa.

E nas noites a terra pesada cai
fora das estrelas, em plena solidão.

Caímos todos. Cai a mão.
E vemos as outras. Dá-se o mesmo em todas elas.

Entretanto há alguém que sustêm essas quedas,
com infinita doçura, entre suas mãos.

Rainer Maria Rilke,
in Antologia Poética
Tradução de Antônio Roberto de Paula Leite

ROSA DO EPÍLOGO

2010-02-18T16:50:00.002-03:00

(Rosa do deserto- Foto by Rafael Davila)

E vai-se a rosa-dos-ventos.
Vai-se o tempo devaneio
e o vento cala
nos longes.

Sinto a rosa que colheste
nem de rosa perfil tênue
e nem mais de rosa
ao longe.

Stella Leonardos
In: Rapsódica

The Old Dust

2010-02-15T19:12:00.004-03:00

The living is a passing traveler;
The dead, a man come home.
One brief journey betwixt heaven and earth,
Then, alas! we are the same old dust of ten thousand ages.
The rabbit in the moon pounds the medicine in vain;
Fu-sang, the tree of immortality, has crumbled to kindling wood.
Man dies, his white bones are dumb without a word
When the green pines feel the coming of the spring.
Looking back, I sigh; looking before, I sigh again.
What is there to prize in the life’s vaporous glory?

Li Po
(China 701-762)

Dancing

2010-02-15T18:42:00.002-03:00

(Foto by Fernando Campanella)

The thought of God dancing
three partners, like ribbons
flowing to the music
the song of creation,
ringing, singing
all around, dancing,
flowing, spinning
creating, saving, guiding
all love, all divine,
together, one, whirling
twirling, to the dance of love

November 24, 2009

Raymond A. Foss
(Westfield-Massachusetts-EUA- 1960)

TO THE NIGHT

2010-02-11T17:40:00.004-03:00

(Foto by Fernando Campanella)

This huge imponderable silence
revives dead things
by casting its charms
upon the light.

Time to overflow the glasses
with moon's fluids -
and here's to the night.

Fernando Campanella
(Minas Gerais- BR)

À NOITE

Este silêncio vasto e imponderável
revive as coisas mortas
atraindo a luz
em sua corte.

Tempo de transbordar as taças
com fluídos de lua -
e de brindar à noite.

Fernando Campanella
Tardução do autor.

'If'

2010-02-09T21:00:00.005-03:00

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling
(Bombay, in British India,30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)
(Nobel Prize in Literature by 1907)

What Is Love?

2010-02-09T20:13:00.001-03:00

What is Love?
Is it a folly,
Is it mirth, or melancholy?
Joys above,
Are there many, or not any?
What is Love?

If you please,
A most sweet folly!
Full of mirth and melancholy:
Both of these!
In its sadness worth all gladness,
If you please!

Prithee where,
Goes Love a-hiding?
Is he long in his abiding
Anywhere?
Can you bind him when you find him;
Prithee, where?

With spring days
Love comes and dallies:
Upon the mountains, through the valleys
Lie Love's ways.
Then he leaves you and deceives you
In spring days.

Ernest Dowson

AO SONO

2010-02-09T19:46:00.002-03:00

Rebanho de ovelhas que lentamente passa
Uma de cada vez, o som da chuva e o farfalhar
Das folhas ao vento, abelhas, cascatas e o mar,
Prados, lenços d’água e o céu que esvoaça;
Sobre eles divaguei, um por um e ainda estou
Desperto! Logo os pássaros cantando
Nas árvores do pomar estarei escutando,
E o primeiro trinado do cuco que lá pousou.
Ontem e nas duas outras noites foi assim
Sono! Com todos os ardis não te pude receber:
Poupes-me nesta noite, vem a mim
Sem ti, que seria do encanto do alvorecer?
Vem, barreira entre o dia e a noite, enfim,
Pai do fresco pensar e do saudável viver!

William Wordsworth
in O olho Imóvel Pela Força da Harmonia

Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

2010-02-08T20:45:00.002-03:00

(Foto by Fernando Campanella)

V

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

William Wordsworth

Lines Written In Early Spring

2010-02-08T16:53:00.002-03:00

I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:--
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature's holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?

William Wordsworth

Rain In My Heart

2010-02-08T15:51:00.003-03:00

There is a quiet in my heart
Like on who rests from days of pain.
Outside, the sparrows on the roof
Are chirping in the dripping rain.

Rain in my heart; rain on the roof;
And memory sleeps beneath the gray
And the windless sky and brings no
dreams
Of any well remembered day.

I would not have the heavens fair,
Nor golden clouds, nor breezes
mild,
But days like this, until my heart
To loss of you is reconciled.

I would not see you. Every hope
To know you as you were has
ranged.
I, who am altered, would not find
The face I loved so greatly changed.

Edgar Lee Masters

Pedra Filosofal

2010-02-05T19:49:00.001-03:00

Eles não sabem que o sonho
é uma constante da vida
tão concreta e definida
como outra coisa qualquer

como esta pedra cinzenta
em que me sento e descanso
como este ribeiro manso
em serenos sobressaltos

como estes pinheiros altos
que em verde e oiro se agitam
como estas árvores que gritam
em bebedeiras de azul

eles não sabem que sonho
é vinho, é espuma, é fermento
bichinho alacre e sedento
de focinho pontiagudo
que fuça através de tudo
no perpétuo movimento

Eles não sabem que o sonho
é tela é cor é pincel
base, fuste ou capitel
arco em ogiva, vitral

Pináculo de catedral
contraponto, sinfonia
máscara grega, magia
que é retorta de alquimista

mapa do mundo distante
Rosa dos Ventos Infante
caravela quinhentista
que é cabo da Boa-Esperança

Ouro, canela, marfim
florete de espadachim
bastidor, passo de dança
Columbina e Arlequim

passarola voadora
pára-raios, locomotiva
barco de proa festiva
alto-forno, geradora

cisão do átomo, radar
ultra-som, televisão
desembarque em foguetão
na superfície lunar

Eles não sabem nem sonham
que o sonho comanda a vida
e que sempre que o homem sonha
o mundo pula e avança
como bola colorida
entre as mãos duma criança

Antonio Gedeão

Sometimes the Sky's Too Bright

2010-02-05T09:27:00.001-03:00

Sometimes the sky's too bright,
Or has too many clouds or birds,
And far away's too sharp a sun
To nourish thinking of him.
Why is my hand too blunt
To cut in front of me
My horrid images for me,
Of over-fruitful smiles,
The weightless touching of the lip
I wish to know
I cannot lift, but can,
The creature with the angel's face
Who tells me hurt,
And sees my body go
Down into misery?
No stopping. Put the smile
Where tears have come to dry.
The angel's hurt is left;
His telling burns.

Sometimes a woman's heart has salt,
Or too much blood;
I tear her breast,
And see the blood is mine,
Flowing from her, but mine,
And then I think
Perhaps the sky's too bright;
And watch my hand,
But do not follow it,
And feel the pain it gives,
But do not ache.

Dylan Thomas

Fern Hill

2010-02-05T09:08:00.002-03:00

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.
And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Dylan Thomas
in Collected Poems
(London: Phoenix, 2003)

MY QUINTESSENCIAL BLUE

2010-02-02T12:10:00.001-03:00

(...quisera enxergar meus versos
com vistas de outro,
sem os olhos tacanhos de dentro...)

vou arrancar os sapatos
e ouvir
meu blue quintessenciado

despir-me de humores
e escapar, asas em som,
pelos portais dos sentidos
pelos desvãos do telhado

- não me lembrem então do mundo
este já me entope os poros
a cada esquina
e satura a pele feito pólipo -

vou desfazer as bagagens
armar a noite em blue

e ser assim alteridade
a mim imune
um corpo estranho
um vagalume

Fernando Campanella

Sopra-me

2010-01-29T22:42:00.003-03:00

Sopra-me
que ao de onde procedo
haverei com levezas
de, então, retornar.
Com o calor de teu sopro,
de teu insuflar,
meus versos,
como pelúcias e pétalas,
no regaço das tardes,
no jardim das estrelas,
haverão assim de cair,
haverão de pousar.

Fernando Campanella

Ao Vento

2010-01-29T22:40:00.002-03:00

Fica comigo, mas não posso pedir ao vento
que sopre ao alcance de meu ouvido,
ou à terra que abençoe meus segredos contigo –
nem mesmo da luz querer ouso
que se detenha em meu abrigo.
Quando os dados lançados, e até meu silêncio,
contra toda certeza parece que conspiram
- e caso os dedos do mundo
em suas recurvas unhas nos firam -
releva, e fica comigo: os anjos sabem mais alto
daquilo em que insisto, do que preciso.

(F.Campanella)

“Days”

2010-01-18T19:03:00.002-03:00

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.

Philip Larkin
in ' The Whitsun Weddings', 1964
*Philip Arthur Larkin
(9 August 1922 – 2 December 1985, England)

E N T A R D E C E R

2010-01-12T16:29:00.001-03:00

O crepúsculo desce! A tarde finda. . .
Que drama ante os meus olhos se descerra!
O sol, cansado da batalha infinda,
As pálpebras de luz no ocaso, cerra. . .

Silente a tarde a imensidade brinda!
Infinita saudade me soterra! . . .
Ante esta quadra misteriosa e linda,
Recordo-me dos céus de minha terra!

Olho o poente que aos poucos se avermelha!
Nesta contemplação a alma se ajoelha,
Deslumbra ao calor das grandes ânsias

E sequiosa do sol de outra paragem
Integra-se à beleza da paisagem
E mergulha na bruma das distancias! . . .

Jansen Filho
In: Obras Completas