A Tear And A Smile

(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?

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 -

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

Delores Pires

ETERNA CHUVA

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

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

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

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

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