From time to time a smile is turned upon us

IMG_0270

A smile that blinds with blitheness, overspending
Upon this gasping sightless round of fun …

Das Karussell, Jardin du Luxembourg, Rainer Maria Rilke

Photo: San Diego, 2014

He’ll know

Rain will fall again
on your smooth pavement,
a light rain like
a breath or a step.
The breeze and the dawn
will flourish again
when you return,
as if beneath your step.
Between flowers and sills
the cats will know.
 
There will be other days,
there will be other voices.
You will smile alone.
The cats will know.
You will hear words
old and spent and useless
like costumes left over
from yesterday’s parties.
 
You too will make gestures.
You’ll answer with words—
face of springtime,
you too will make gestures.
 
The cats will know,
face of springtime;
and the light rain
and the hyacinth dawn
that wrench the heart of him
who hopes no more for you—
they are the sad smile
you smile by yourself.
 
There will be other days,
other voices and renewals.
Face of springtime,
we will suffer at daybreak.
Cats Will Know, Cesare Pavese

Words

They are like a crystal,
words.
Some a dagger,
some a blaze.
Others,
merely dew.

Secret they come, full of memory.
Insecurely they sail:
cockleboats or kisses,
the waters trembling.

Abandoned, innocent,
weightless.
They are woven of light.
They are the night.
And even pallid
they recall green paradise.

Who hears them? Who
gathers them, thus,
cruel, shapeless,
in their pure shells?

Translation: 1985, Alexis Levitin, Inhabited Heart
Perivale Press, Los Angeles, 1985

São como um cristal,
as palavras.
Algumas, um punhal,
um incêndio.
Outras,
orvalho apenas.

Secretas vêm, cheias de memória.
Inseguras navegam:
barcos ou beijos,
as águas estremecem.

Desamparadas, inocentes,
leves.
Tecidas são de luz
e são a noite.
E mesmo pálidas
verdes paraísos lembram ainda.

Quem as escuta? Quem
as recolhe, assim,
cruéis, desfeitas,
nas suas conchas puras?

Eugénio de Andrade, Coração do Dia
Limiar, Porto, 1958

Photo: Point Omega by Don Delillo (sometimes I’m too lazy to take notes)

The gliding Lethe leads her silent flood

IMG_4191

The souls that throng the flood

Are those to whom, by fate, are other bodies ow’d:

In Lethe’s lake they long oblivion taste,

Of future life secure, forgetful of the past.

Photo: Ponte de Lima (2017) I have spent a lot of happy and not so happy days in this place during my childhood and teenage years. A village   which is known for a legend of forgetfulness has helped me to know a little bit more of who I am.

References 

The Aeneid by Virgil

Lingering

Come to me in the silence of the night;
    Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
    As sunlight on a stream;
       Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.

O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
    Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimful of love abide and meet;
    Where thirsting longing eyes
       Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
    My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
    Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
       Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago!

Echo, Christina Rossetti

Photo: Leça da Palmeira, after the storm (March 2018)

I’d rather stop

IMG_0275

This is not a good photo. I couldn’t get out of the car and attempt a proper photo, the letter box stands right by a traffic light and words on walls and urban equipments tend to vanish quickly, so you get them when you spot them.

Pause and reflect on the [your / mine]  path 

That’s how it reads to me. That’s what’s lacking, the time to stop and try to see the direction.

Early in the morning

Hoje de manhã saí muito cedo,

Hoje de manhã saí muito cedo,

Por ter acordado ainda mais cedo

E não ter nada que quisesse fazer…

 

Não sabia por caminho tomar

Mas o vento soprava forte, varria para um lado,

E segui o caminho para onde o vento me soprava nas costas.

 

Assim tem sido sempre a minha vida, e

Assim quero que possa ser sempre —

Vou onde o vento me leva e não me

Sinto pensar.

13-6-1930

“Poemas Inconjuntos”. In Poemas de Alberto Caeiro. Fernando Pessoa.

I went out very early in the morning today
Because I woke up even earlier
And there was nothing I wanted to do…

I didn’t know which road to take
But the wind rose strong, sweeping up from one side,
And I followed the road where the wind pushed at my back.

That’s how my life has always been, and
That’s how I’d like to be able to have it always be —
I go where the wind leads me
And don’t feel like thinking.

Translation here 

Photo: Afurada on a perfect Saturday morning

Be all this

Quiero que sepas
una cosa.

Tú sabes cómo es esto:
si miro
la luna de cristal, la rama roja 
del lento otoño en mi ventana, 
si toco
junto al fuego 
la impalpable ceniza
o el arrugado cuerpo de la leña, 
todo me lleva a ti, 
como si todo lo que existe, 
aromas, luz, metales, 
fueran pequeños barcos que navegan 
hacia las islas tuyas que me aguardan.

Ahora bien, 
si poco a poco dejas de quererme
dejaré de quererte poco a poco.

Si de pronto
me olvidas
no me busques,
que ya te habré olvidado.

Si consideras largo y loco 
el viento de banderas 
que pasa por mi vida 
y te decides
a dejarme a la orilla
del corazón en que tengo raíces,
piensa
que en ese día,
a esa hora
levantaré los brazos
y saldrán mis raíces
a buscar otra tierra.

Pero
si cada día, 
cada hora
sientes que a mí estás destinada 
con dulzura implacable.
Si cada día sube 
una flor a tus labios a buscarme, 
ay amor mío, ay mía, 
en mí todo ese fuego se repite, 
en mí nada se apaga ni se olvida, 
mi amor se nutre de tu amor, amada, 
y mientras vivas estará en tus brazos 
sin salir de los míos.

Si tu me olvidas, Pablo Neruda

 

I want you to know

one thing.

You know how this is:

if I look

at the crystal moon, at the red branch

of the slow autumn at my window,

if I touch

near the fire

the impalpable ash

or the wrinkled body of the log,

everything carries me to you,

as if everything that exists,

aromas, light, metals,

were little boats

that sail

toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,

if little by little you stop loving me

I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly

you forget me

do not look for me,

for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,

the wind of banners

that passes through my life,

and you decide

to leave me at the shore

of the heart where I have roots,

remember

that on that day,

at that hour,

I shall lift my arms

and my roots will set off

to seek another land.

But

if each day,

each hour,

you feel that you are destined for me

with implacable sweetness,

if each day a flower

climbs up to your lips to seek me,

ah my love, ah my own,

in me all that fire is repeated,

in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,

my love feeds on your love, beloved,

and as long as you live it will be in your arms

without leaving mine.

Photo: Wall poetry on the streets of Porto

Be all this.
Be this touch with all the skin that can comfort you

 

Welcome song

Here’s your Mom, here’s your Dad.
Welcome to being their flesh and blood.
Why do you look so sad?

Here’s your food, here’s your drink.
Also some thoughts, if you care to think.
Welcome to everything.

Here’s your practically clean slate.
Welcome to it, though it’s kind of late.
Welcome at any rate.

Here’s your paycheck, here’s your rent.
Money is nature’s fifth element.
Welcome to every cent.

Here’s your swarm and your huge beehive.
Welcome to that there’s roughly five
billion like you alive.

Welcome to the phone book that stars your name
Digits are democracy’s secret aim.
Welcome to your claim to fame.

Here’s your marriage, and here’s divorce.
Now that’s the order you can’t reverse.
Welcome to it; up yours.

Here’s your blade, here’s your wrist.
Welcome to playing your own terrorist;
call this your Middle East.

Here’s your mirror, your dental gleam.
Here’s an octopus in your dream.
Why do you try to scream?

Here’s your corn-cob, your TV set.
Your candidate suffering an upset.
Welcome to what he said.

Here’s your porch, see the cars pass by.
Here’s your shitting dog’s guilty eye.
Welcome to its alibi.

Here are your cicadas, then a chickadee,
the bulb’s dry tear in your lemon tea.
Welcome to infinity.

Here are your pills on the plastic tray,
Your disappointing, crisp X-ray.
You are welcome to pray.

Here’s your cemetery, a well kept glen.
Welcome to a voice that says, “Amen.”
The end of the rope, old man.

Here’s your will, and here’s a few
takers. Here’s an empty pew.
Here’s life after you.

And here are your stars which appear still keen
on shining as though you had never been.
They might have a point, old bean.

Here’s your afterlife, with no trace
of you, especially of your face.
Welcome, and call it space.

Welcome to where one cannot breathe.
This way, space resembles what’s underneath
and Saturn holds the wreath.

Joseph Brodsky

 

Enjoying Porto’s sunsets and making Monday’s poetry late again.

 

 

even though it isn’t mine

IMG_20180113_102833.jpg

even though I feel at home in most places I travel to, even though I can’t wait to leave, even though it now looks mostly as a theme park, I sometimes can’t help but feel that Porto  belongs to me because I belong to it.

References 

Truman Capote

%d bloggers like this: