Tag: Monday Poetry

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)

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)

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.

 

 

Não fora o Mar

Não fora o mar,

e eu seria feliz na minha rua,

neste primeiro andar da minha casa

a ver, de dia, o sol, de noite a lua,

calada, quieta, sem um golpe de asa.

Não fora o mar,

e seriam contados os meus passos,

tantos para viver, para morrer,

tantos os movimentos dos meus braços,

pequena angústia, pequeno prazer.

Não fora o mar,

e os seus sonhos seriam sem violência

como irisadas bolas de sabão,

efémero cristal, branca aparência,

e o resto — pingos de água em minha mão.

Não fora o mar,

e este cruel desejo de aventura

seria vaga música ao sol pôr

nem sequer brasa viva, queimadura,

pouco mais que o perfume duma flor.

Não fora o mar

e o longo apelo, o canto da sereia,

apenas ilusão, miragem,

breve canção, passo breve na areia,

desejo balbuciante de viagem.

Não fora o mar

e, resignada, em vez de olhar os astros

tudo o que é alto, inacessível, fundo,

cimos, castelos, torres, nuvens, mastros,

iria de olhos baixos pelo mundo.

Não fora o mar

e o meu canto seria flor e mel,

asa de borboleta, rouxinol,

e não rude halali, garra cruel,

Águia Real que desafia o sol.

Não fora o mar

e este potro selvagem, sem arção,

crinas ao vento, com arreio,

meu altivo, indomável coração,

Não fora o mar

e comeria à mão,

não fora o mar

e aceitaria o freio.

Fernanda de Castro, in “Trinta e Nove Poemas”

I couldn’t find a translation of this poem. I did try to translate it myself and I think I ended up mutilating it because I was not able to translate the feeling of disquiet a lifetime staring at the sea actually has over ourselves. In the midst of all the routines, broken illusions and plans that have not been fulfilled, you can’t help yourself. You don’t surrender.

It weren’t for the sea,

and I would be happy on my street,

on this first floor of my house

to see, by day, the sun, at night the moon,

quiet, quiet, without a blow of the wing.

It weren’t for the sea,

and my steps would be numbered,

so many to live, to die,

so many movements of my arms,

little anguish, little pleasure.

It weren’t for the sea,

and your dreams would be without violence

like iridescent soap bubbles,

ephemeral crystal, white appearance,

and the rest – drops of water in my hand.

It weren’t for the sea,

and this cruel desire for adventure

would be vague music in the sun

not even live coal, burning,

little more than the perfume of a flower.

It weren’t for the sea

and the long appeal, the mermaid’s song,

only illusion, mirage,

brief song, brief step in the sand,

bursts of travel.

It weren’t for the sea

and, resigned, instead of looking at the stars

everything that is high, inaccessible, deep,

high, castles, towers, clouds, masts,

would be travelling face down through the world.

It weren’t for the sea

and my song would be flower and honey,

butterfly wing, nightingale,

and not rude halali, cruel claw,

Royall eagle defying the sun.

It weren’t for the sea

and this wild colt,

mane in the wind, harnessed,

my haughty, indomitable heart,

It weren’t for the sea

and I would eat out of hand,

It weren’t for the sea,

and would accept the bridle.

Out of step

We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers
And sitting by desolate streams;
World losers and world forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
 
With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world’s great cities.
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire’s glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song’s measure
Can trample an empire down.
 
We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o’erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world’s worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.
Ode by Arthur O’Shaughnessy (1874)
Photo taken at Black Mamba – Burgers & Records, a very cool vegan burger place in Porto

I do not know what

My world is not like the world of other people, I want much more, I demand much more, there is inside me a thirst for the infinite, a constant anxiety that I do not even understand, because I am far from being a pessimist; first I am an exalted one, with an intense soul, violent, tormented, a soul that does not feel well where it is, that misses… I do not know what!

Florbela Espanca (Correspondence, 1930)

 

 

Monday’s poetry came late to me this week

When Soft Voices Die

Music, when soft voices die,

Vibrates in the memory;

Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap’d for the belovèd’s bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Missing my road trips

Spain was a taut, dry drum-head
Daily beating a dull thud
Flatlands and eagle’s nest
Silence lashed by the storm.
How much, to the point of weeping, in my soul
I love your hard soil, your poor bread,
Your poor people, how much in the deep place
Of my being there is still the lost flower
Of your wrinkled villages, motionless in time
And your metallic meadows
Stretched out in the moonlight through the ages,
Now devoured by a false god.

All your confinement, your animal isolation
While you are still conscious
Surrounded by the abstract stones of silence,
Your rough wine, your smooth wine
Your violent and dangerous vineyards.

Solar stone, pure among the regions
Of the world, Spain streaked
With blood and metal, blue and victorious
Proletarian Spain, made of petals and bullets
Unique, alive, asleep – resounding.

What Spain Was Like, Pablo Neruda

The time will come

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Love After Love, Derek Walcott

Silence is the place where you scream

Chego atrasado à frisa dos teus olhos.

A música violeta pestaneja na sala.

Há uma actriz transida que tirita

              transita

                                   mas não fala.

Entro no teu olhar

                                    Sou uma seta

que te cega e nos cala.

O silêncio é o sítio onde se grita

e a noite, minha amiga,

é mais discreta

como convém ao poeta

que se veste de gala.

 

O Smoking, José Carlos Ary dos Santos

 

I am late to the frieze of your eyes.

The violet music blinks in the room.

There is a transient actress who

               transits

                                    but does not speak.

I enter your gaze

                                     I’m an arrow

who blinds you and keeps us silent.

Silence is the place where you scream

and the night, my friend,

is more discreet

as befits the poet

who dresses up.

 

The Smoking, José Carlos Ary dos Santos ( my imperfect translation)

Photo: Written on the wall, Braga (November 26, 2017)

The Greater Sea

My soul and I went to the great sea to bathe.  And when we reached the shore, we went about looking for a hidden and lonely place.

But as we walked, we saw a man sitting on a grey rock taking pinches of salt from a bag and throwing them into the sea.

“This is the pessimist,” said my soul, “Let us leave this place. We cannot bathe here.”

We walked on until we reached an inlet.  There we saw, standing on a white rock, a man holding a bejeweled box, from which he took sugar and threw it into the sea.

“And this is the optimist,” said my soul, “And he too must not see our naked bodies.”

Further on we walked.  And on a beach we saw a man picking up dead fish and tenderly putting them back into the water.

“And we cannot bathe before him,” said my soul.  “He is the humane philanthropist.”

And we passed on.

Then we came where we saw a man tracing his shadow on the sand. Great waves came and erased it.  But he went on tracing it again and again.

“He is the mystic,” said my soul, “Let us leave him.”

And we walked on, till in a quiet cover we saw a man scooping up the foam and putting it into an alabaster bowl.

“He is the idealist,” said my soul, “Surely he must not see our nudity.”

And on we walked.  Suddenly we heard a voice crying, “This is the sea.  This is the deep sea.  This is the vast and mighty sea.” And when we reached the voice it was a man whose back was turned to the sea, and at his ear he held a shell, listening to its murmur.

And my soul said, “Let us pass on.  He is the realist, who turns his back on the whole he cannot grasp, and busies himself with a fragment.”

So we passed on.  And in a weedy place among the rocks was a man with his head buried in the sand.  And I said to my soul, “We can bath here, for he cannot see us.”

“Nay,” said my soul, “For he is the most deadly of them all.  He is the puritan.”

Then a great sadness came over the face of my soul, and into her voice.

“Let us go hence,” she said, “For there is no lonely, hidden place where we can bathe.  I would not have this wind lift my golden hair, or bare my white bosom in this air, or let the light disclose my sacred nakedness.”

Then we left that sea to seek the Greater Sea.

 Kahlil Gibran, The Greater Sea 
Photo: Peniche, October 2017

Words I said and never meant




        There are words
I've had to save myself from,
like My Lord and Blessed Mother,
words I said and never meant,
though I admit a part of me misses
the ornamental stateliness
of High Mass, that smell

        of incense. Heaven did exist,
I discovered, but was reciprocal
and momentary, like lust
felt at exactly the same time—
two mortals, say, on a resilient bed,
making a small case for themselves.

        You and I became the words
I'd say before I'd lay me down to sleep,
and again when I'd wake—wishful
words, no belief in them yet.
It seemed you'd been put on earth
to distract me
from what was doctrinal and dry.
Electricity may start things,
but if they're to last
I've come to understand
a steady, low-voltage hum

        of affection
must be arrived at. How else to offset
the occasional slide
into neglect and ill temper?
I learned, in time, to let heaven
go its mythy way, to never again

        be a supplicant
of any single idea. For you and me
it's here and now from here on in.
Nothing can save us, nor do we wish
to be saved.

        Let night come
with its austere grandeur,
ancient superstitions and fears.
It can do us no harm.
We'll put some music on,
open the curtains, let things darken
as they will

Here and Now, Stephen Dunn

Photo: Lisbon, Cais das Colunas (today)