'YELLOW MOON'

(Foto by Fernando Campanella)

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

Fernando Campanella


'LUA AMARELA'

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

(Fernando Campanella)

'DAYS THAT COME AND GO'

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Odysséas Elytis
Tradução de Manuel Resende.

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

Ave, Tao

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

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

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

Ama et labora.

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


Fernando Campanella

THE OVEN BIRD

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


Roberto Frost
(1874-1963)

The Lake

(Claude Monet)

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

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

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

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

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


Mihai Eminescu
(1876, Translated by Dimitrie Cuclin)

Monotony

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

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


Constantine P. Cavafy

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

José Saramago

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

(Jose Saramago)
(1922-2010)

The Sorrow of Love

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

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

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

William Butler Yeats
(1892)

'The Sorrow of Love'


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

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

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


William Butler Yeats
(Revised text of 1925)

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

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

"Nightbound"

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

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

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

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

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


(F. Campanella)


"Nightbound"

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

(um extático zumbi
Eternamente vagando, seria eu?)

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

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

o que bebe e lacrimeja
gotas de âmbar à noite,

algum piscar dos deuses

- Silêncio! – apenas um sonho? –

eu sou da lua a luz transfigurada.


Fernando Campanella

Sonnet VIII

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

Fernando Pessoa
In "35 Sonnets-(1.918)

"OISEAUX DE PASSAGE"

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

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

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

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

Cruz e Souza
in "Derradeiro"

'MASCARADA'

Você me conhece?

(Frase dos mascarados de antigamente)


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


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


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


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


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


Manuel Bandeira

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

INTENTIONS

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


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


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


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

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

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

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

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

‘AQUARIUM’

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

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

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

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

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

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