Inutilmente

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)

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

"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

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

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

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

(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

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

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

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


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

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

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

Kahlil Gibran

Um poema solto

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

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

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


Cao Zhi*

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

COEUR SOLITAIRE

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

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

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


(Abril de 1952).
Ives Gandra

'Chanson'

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

Delores Pires - Clair de Lune

***

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

(Fernando Campanella)

Tanka

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

Delores Pires — Le Voyage de mes Rêves

***

(Foto by Fernando Campanella)

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

(Fernando Campanella)

Autumn Sadness

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

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

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

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

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

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


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