Natal – 1950

 

Nenhum Natal será possível: sei

que tudo enfim suspenso aguarda

não já Natais sempre de guerra mas

a morte iluminada como aurora

entre esta gente que se junta rindo

e as luzes interiores, muitas cabeças juntas;

entre as lágrimas de ternura e os murmúrios de esperança,

entre as vozes e os silêncios, as pedras e as árvores,

entre muralhas de janelas sob a chuva,

entre agonias dos que lutam porque são mandados

e a cobarde angústia dos que apenas mandam,

no meio da vida, círculo de fogo,

à luz de que se vê uma calçada suja

de restos de comida e de papéis rasgados

– se sei, embora saiba, quanto soube:

ah canto do meu canto, olhar do meu olhar,

nenhum Natal, bem sei, mas outra gente,

e tanta gente, e mesmo que um só fosse,

já louco, envelhecido, apenas hábito,

que poderei fazer, senão humildemente

cantar?

Jorge de Sena

in, Natais in Pedra Filosofal

Declaration of Interdependence

 

Unsplash

 

Such has been the patient sufferance…

We’re a mother’s bread, instant potatoes, milk at a checkout line. We’re her three children pleading for bubble gum and their father. We’re the three minutes she steals to page through a tabloid, needing to believe even stars’ lives are as joyful and bruised.

Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury…

We’re her second job serving an executive absorbed in his Wall Street Journal at a sidewalk café shadowed by skyscrapers. We’re the shadows of the fortune he won and the family he lost. We’re his loss and the lost. We’re a father in a coal town who can’t mine a life anymore because too much and too little has happened, for too long.

A history of repeated injuries and usurpations…

We’re the grit of his main street’s blacked-out windows and graffitied truths. We’re a street in another town lined with royal palms, at home with a Peace Corps couple who collect African art. We’re their dinner-party talk of wines, wielded picket signs, and burned draft cards. We’re what they know: it’s time to do more than read the New York Times, buy fair-trade coffee and organic corn.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress…

We’re the farmer who grew the corn, who plows into his couch as worn as his back by the end of the day. We’re his TV set blaring news having everything and nothing to do with the field dust in his eyes or his son nested in the ache of his arms. We’re his son. We’re a black teenager who drove too fast or too slow, talked too much or too little, moved too quickly, but not quick enough. We’re the blast of the bullet leaving the gun. We’re the guilt and the grief of the cop who wished he hadn’t shot.

We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor…

We’re the dead, we’re the living amid the flicker of vigil candlelight. We’re in a dim cell with an inmate reading Dostoevsky. We’re his crime, his sentence, his amends, we’re the mending of ourselves and others. We’re a Buddhist serving soup at a shelter alongside a stockbroker. We’re each other’s shelter and hope: a widow’s fifty cents in a collection plate and a golfer’s ten-thousand-dollar pledge for a cure.

We hold these truths to be self-evident…

We’re the cure for hatred caused by despair. We’re the good morning of a bus driver who remembers our name, the tattooed man who gives up his seat on the subway. We’re every door held open with a smile when we look into each other’s eyes the way we behold the moon. We’re the moon. We’re the promise of one people, one breath declaring to one another: I see you. I need you. I am you.

Richard Blanco

Bypass – The Two Voices

 

 Like a man and a woman – arguing

The ego’s two voices do their thing

All day and night, the story goes

Like a river, a continuous flow

A conflicting conversation as old as time

Yet told with the subtlety of an ancient rhyme

The first one says it’s never enough

The second calls the former’s bluff

And thinks itself on a higher plane

But it’s really just the first again.

Playing the trickster, making a fool,

Turning your intentions back on you.

Using an insidious form of bypass,

To avoid looking in the looking-glass.

Aaron Waddell

No Closure

 

Not had closure cannot be enough

You always were a guy tough

Smoothened the diamond rough

And then I was left second guessing

The sky the clouds the rainbows

the sunrise increasingly distressing

Love we cannot have

Friends we cannot be

What else is left for me to be?

A writer of pomes and dreadful tomes?

Explain where the deceit came in?

When lies were hidden from the beginning?

What am I to you?

Just another lark a song?

Why did you do me this wrong

Why did you pick me from the throngs?

Tell me all for I cannot hold it longer

I will take it to my resting place

Please tell me all Can things get any wronger?

For once revive me from this daze

The Muse

Praise Song for the Day

  

Each day we go about our business,

walking past each other, catching each other’s

eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise. All about us is

noise and bramble, thorn and din, each

one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning

a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,

repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere,

with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,

with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky.

A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

We encounter each other in words, words

spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,

words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark

the will of some one and then others, who said

I need to see what’s on the other side.

I know there’s something better down the road.

We need to find a place where we are safe.

We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.

Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,

who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

picked the cotton and the lettuce, built

brick by brick the glittering edifices

they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.

Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,

the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,

others by first do no harm or take no more

than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,

love that casts a widening pool of light,

love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,

any thing can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light.

Elizabeth Alexander

Exile

 

Thomas Toft

As a man approaches thirty he may

take stock of himself.

Not that anything important happens.

–

At thirty the mud will have settled:

you see yourself in a mirror.

Perhaps, refuse the image as yours.

–

Makes no difference, unless

you overtake yourself. Pause for breath.

Time gave you distance: you see little else.

–

You stir, and the mirror dissolves.

Experience doesn’t always make for knowledge:

you make the same mistakes.

–

Do the same things over again.

The woman you may have loved

you never married. These many years

–

you warmed yourself at her hands.

The luminous pebbles of her body

stayed your feet, else you had overflowed

–

the banks, never reached shore.

The sides of the river swell

with the least pressure of her toes.

–

All night your hand has rested

on her left breast.

In the morning when she is gone

–

you will be alone like the stone benches

in the park, and would have forgotten

her whispers in the noises of the city.

R. Parthasarthy

Trust

Pexels

Oh we've got to trust

one another again

in some essentials.

Not the narrow little

bargaining trust

that says: I'm for you

if you'll be for me. -

But a bigger trust,

a trust of the sun

that does not bother

about moth and rust,

and we see it shining

in one another.

Oh don't you trust me,

don't burden me

with your life and affairs; don't

thrust me

into your cares.

But I think you may trust

the sun in me

that glows with just

as much glow as you see

in me, and no more.

But if it warms

your heart's quick core

why then trust it, it forms

one faithfulness more.

And be, oh be

a sun to me,

not a weary, insistent

personality

but a sun that shines

and goes dark, but shines

again and entwines

with the sunshine in me

till we both of us

are more glorious

and more sunny.

D H Lawrence

Dreams

 

Despite the geologists’ knowledge and craft,

mocking magnets, graphs, and maps—

in a split second the dream

piles before us mountains as stony

as real life.

And since mountains, then valleys, plains

with perfect infrastructures.

Without engineers, contractors, workers,

bulldozers, diggers, or supplies—

raging highways, instant bridges,

thickly populated pop-up cities.

Without directors, megaphones, and cameramen—

crowds knowing exactly when to frighten us

and when to vanish.

Without architects deft in their craft,

without carpenters, bricklayers, concrete pourers—

on the path a sudden house just like a toy,

and in it vast halls that echo with our steps

and walls constructed out of solid air.

Not just the scale, it’s also the precision—

a specific watch, an entire fly,

on the table a cloth with cross-stitched flowers,

a bitten apple with teeth marks.

And we—unlike circus acrobats,

conjurers, wizards, and hypnotists—

can fly unfledged,

we light dark tunnels with our eyes,

we wax eloquent in unknown tongues,

talking not with just anyone, but with the dead.

And as a bonus, despite our own freedom,

the choices of our heart, our tastes,

we’re swept away

by amorous yearnings for—

and the alarm clock rings.

So what can they tell us, the writers of dream books,

the scholars of oneiric signs and omens,

the doctors with couches for analyses—

if anything fits,

it’s accidental,

and for one reason only,

that in our dreamings,

in their shadowings and gleamings,

in their multiplings, inconceivablings,

in their haphazardings and widescatterings

at times even a clear-cut meaning

may slip through.

Wisława Szymborska

Psalm

Oh, the leaky boundaries of man-made states! 

How many clouds float over them with impunity;

how much desert sand shifts from one land to another;

how many mountain pebbles tumble onto foreign soil

in provocative hops!

Need I mention every single bird that flies in the face of frontiers

or alights on the roadblock at the border?

A humble robin - still, its tail resides abroad

while its beak stays home. If that weren't enough, it won't stop bobbing!

Among innumerable insects, I'll single out only the ant

between the border guard's left and right boots

blithely ignoring the questions "Where from?" and "Where to?" 

Oh, to register in detail, at a glance, the chaos

prevailing on every continent!

Isn't that a privet on the far bank

smuggling its hundred-thousandth leaf across the river?

And who but the octopus, with impudent long arms,

would disrupt the sacred bounds of territorial waters?

And how can we talk of order overall?

when the very placement of the stars

leaves us doubting just what shines for whom?

Not to speak of the fog's reprehensible drifting!

And dust blowing all over the steppes

as if they hadn't been partitioned!

And the voices coasting on obliging airwaves,

that conspiratorial squeaking, those indecipherable mutters!

Only what is human can truly be foreign.

The rest is mixed vegetation, subversive moles, and wind. 

Wisława Szymborska

in, "Map: Collected and Last Poems"

The Mental Prison

 

I’m different from my peers,

I don’t think the same way,

When they run, I walk,

When they’re quiet, I talk,

And I question why I do it every day.

I was not a sad child,

I was just a bit demure,

People asked, “Is he sad?”

Which always made me mad,

And I don’t want to be asked any more.

I don’t care if I’m accepted,

Like so many kids do,

But since one cannot be changed,

He who is self-estranged,

Then what must I get through?

Sometimes I feel like I’m falling,

a fear I dread and dread,

I feel like I’m alone,

In a place dark and unknown,

But I know it’s all in my head.

Dumb, ugly, overweight,

I feel weighed down by these names,

These thoughts snake all around

and they hold me to the ground.

I am stricken by these pains.

Yet deep within my body,

lodged somewhere in my head,

Is a thought so foul,

It would make anyone howl,

It is my darkest fear: dread.

It keeps me from expressing

how I really feel,

And no matter what I try,

It only makes me cry,

And I’m trapped, unable to heal.

And like a wound untreated,

I fester like a sore,

And sore I am,

For with every exam,

I want the pain to stop more and more.

But what good would come from ending it all?

To seal my wounds with eternal sleep?

Though your tears may pass,

as you thus succumb to the grass,

It’s now your parents’ turn to weep.

A quick short simple life,

A cursory glance at what may be,

But you want no more,

As life is a chore,

So like an autumn leaf, you lie below a tree.

And this is what fear can do,

It’s the most vile of its kind,

It can put a frog in your throat,

and a crocodile in the moat,

around the walls that seal off your mind.

But what is most important,

Is not if you fit in,

It’s that even in the dark,

there’s is always a spark,

for those that want to begin, not give in.

Begin what you ask?

Begin to ease the pains,

That restrain you so,

And one day you’ll know,

The way to sever your chains.

But there is a silver lining,

To every sad tale,

I’ve struggled a lot,

And internally fought,

So that my sanity will not fail.

For I like this life,

And do not wish it to end,

I will come to terms with my fears,

And after many, many years,

I will call my fears my friends

Henry Lynch

Não viver é o que mais cansa

 

Life Of Pix via Pexels

 

Não é o viver que me cansa. 

É o não haver morto 

que, em mim, não ressuscite. 

De tal modo 

que não encontro morte que seja minha. 

Alheio e distante 

se tornou o fim que trago em mim. 

Longínqua a fonte 

onde bebi a luz até ser pranto. 

O meu sonho 

vai lavrando noites 

e não há fundura na terra 

que receba o meu sono. 

A casa 

segue a vocação da asa. 

E eu, 

para ser feliz,

esqueço-me que sou raiz. 

Mia Couto

Sem Fim

 

Jason Peterson

Sempre e sem fim a vida... 

tão pesada de incerteza 

tão plena de impossíveis 

mas a tamanha altura erguida! 

Um invisível suporte

- foi-se-lhe o fio e o norte! -

sem fim aos céus sem nome 

projecta o sonho incansável 

dum reviver sem retrocesso 

dum atingir sempre passando. 

Plenitude atingida 

quer dizer nova largada 

sempre e sem fim rediviva 

a chama que não se apaga

- que a vida não tem sentido 

se dum momento parado 

se faz água estagnada 

charco em que se adormeça 

das canseiras do caminho. 

Fonte sem par 

nuvem sem forma 

a força que não se extingue 

alevanta o seu pendão 

de combate sem naufrágio

- que quanto mais as balas dão 

as setas vão a morte voa 

mais clara a nota soa 

do clamor de vitória! 

Que não há vida sem mortes 

avanço sem retrocesso 

montanha sem precipícios! 

E quanto mais sobe a vida 

na projecção dum destino 

envolto em bruma de signos 

de astrais irreais desígnios 

maior a queda se ousa 

e mais se ganha a vitória 

do quase certo de perdê-la. 

Sonhos de mares de procela 

sem bússola nem equipagem 

sem velas e sem navio! 

Mares da angústia vencida 

calcada por um desígnio 

de não parar sequer no fim! 

E lá ao longe na bruma 

num longe que sempre e sem fim 

renasce sempre mais longe 

quando vai ser atingido 

envolto em voos de chamas 

o cume sem onde espera. 

Lá 

onde sem fio 

onde sem norte 

o rumo se tece e manda.

Adolfo Casais Monteiro

Nothing Twice

 

Sergei Nechaev

 

 

Nothing can ever happen twice.

In consequence, the sorry fact is

that we arrive here improvised

and leave without the chance to practice.

Even if there is no one dumber,

if you’re the planet’s biggest dunce,

you can’t repeat the class in summer:

this course is only offered once.

No day copies yesterday,

no two nights will teach what bliss is

in precisely the same way,

with precisely the same kisses.

One day, perhaps some idle tongue

mentions your name by accident:

I feel as if a rose were flung

into the room, all hue and scent.

The next day, though you’re here with me,

I can’t help looking at the clock:

A rose? A rose? What could that be?

Is it a flower or a rock?

Why do we treat the fleeting day

with so much needless fear and sorrow?

It’s in its nature not to stay:

Today is always gone tomorrow.

With smiles and kisses, we prefer

to seek accord beneath our star,

although we’re different (we concur)

just as two drops of water are.

Wislawa Szymborska

in, Poems New and Collected: 1957–1997

O quarto

Quem te pôs a mão no ombro,

a faca que te atravessou o coração,

são feridas alheias, talvez algo que leste;

entretanto partiste

para lugares menos iluminados

e corações menos vulneráveis,

pode perguntar-se é o que fazes ainda aqui

se já cá não estás.

A hora havia de chegar em que

nos perderíamos um do outro.

E acabaríamos necessariamente assim,

mortos inventariando mortos.

Morrer, porém, não é fácil,

ficam sombras nem sequer as nossas,

e a nossa voz fala-nos

numa língua estrangeira.

Apaga a luz e vira-te para o outro lado

e acorda amanhã como novo,

barba impecavelmente feita,

o dia um sonho sólido onde a noite se limpa e se deita.

Manuel António Pina

Junto À Água

  

Casarsa

Os homens temem as longas viagens,

os ladrões da estrada,as hospedarias,

e temem morrer em frios leitos

e ter sepultura em terra estranha.

Por isso os seus passos os levam

de regresso a casa,às veredas da infância,

ao velho portão em ruínas,à poeira

das primeiras,das únicas lágrimas.

Quantas vezes em

desolados quartos de hotel

esperei em vão que me batesses à porta,

voz de infância,que o teu silêncio me chamasse!

E perdi-vos para sempre entre prédios altos,

sonhos de beleza,e em ruas intermináveis,

e no meio das multidões dos aeroportos.

Agora só quero dormir um sono sem olhos

e sem escuridão,sob um telhado por fim.

À minha volta estilhaça-se

o meu rosto em infinitos espelhos

e desmoronam-se os meus retratos nas molduras.

Só quero um sítio onde pousar a cabeça.

Anoitece em todas as cidades do mundo,

acenderam-se as luzes de corredores sonâmbulos

onde o meu coração, falando, vagueia.

Manuel António Pina

Mude

Mude

Mude, mas comece devagar,

porque a direção é mais importante que a velocidade.

Sente-se em outra cadeira, no outro lado da mesa.

Mais tarde, mude de mesa.

Quando sair, procure andar pelo outro lado da rua.

Depois, mude de caminho, ande por outras ruas,

calmamente, observando com

atenção os lugares por onde você passa.

Tome outros ônibus.

Mude por uns tempos o estilo das roupas.

Dê os seus sapatos velhos.

Procure andar descalço alguns dias.

Tire uma tarde inteira para passear livremente na praia,

ou no parque, e ouvir o canto dos passarinhos.

Veja o mundo de outras perspectivas.

Abra e feche as gavetas e portas com a mão esquerda.

Durma no outro lado da cama...

Depois, procure dormir em outras camas

Assista a outros programas de tv,

compre outros jornais... leia outros livros.

Viva outros romances.

Não faça do hábito um estilo de vida.

Ame a novidade.

Durma mais tarde.

Durma mais cedo.

Aprenda uma palavra nova por dia numa outra língua.

Corrija a postura.

Coma um pouco menos, escolha comidas diferentes,

novos temperos, novas cores, novas delícias.

Tente o novo todo dia.

O novo lado, o novo método, o novo sabor,

o novo jeito, o novo prazer, o novo amor.

A nova vida.

Tente.

Busque novos amigos.

Tente novos amores.

Faça novas relações.

Almoce em outros locais,

vá a outros restaurantes,

tome outro tipo de bebida,

compre pão em outra padaria.

Almoce mais cedo,

jante mais tarde ou vice-versa.

Escolha outro mercado... outra marca de sabonete,

outro creme dental...

Tome banho em novos horários.

Use canetas de outras cores.

Vá passear em outros lugares.

Ame muito,

cada vez mais,

de modos diferentes.

Troque de bolsa, de carteira, de malas,

troque de carro, compre novos

óculos, escreva outras poesias.

Jogue os velhos relógios,

quebre delicadamente

esses horrorosos despertadores.

Abra conta em outro banco.

Vá a outros cinemas, outros cabeleireiros,

outros teatros, visite novos museus.

Mude.

Lembre-se de que a Vida é uma só.

E pense seriamente em arrumar um outro emprego,

uma nova ocupação,

um trabalho mais light, mais prazeroso,

mais digno, mais humano.

Se você não encontrar razões para ser livre, invente-as.

Seja criativo.

E aproveite para fazer uma viagem despretensiosa,

longa, se possível sem destino.

Experimente coisas novas.

Troque novamente.

Mude, de novo.

Experimente outra vez.

Você certamente conhecerá coisas melhores

e coisas piores do que as já

conhecidas, mas não é isso o que importa.

O mais importante é a mudança,

o movimento, o dinamismo, a energia.

Só o que está morto não muda!

Repito por pura alegria de viver: a salvação é pelo risco,

sem o qual a vida não vale a pena!

Edson Marques 

Sisyphus

 

After awhile, I no longer remembered

why I was being punished, and after that

I was not sure it was punishment at all. There was enough

to do with checking the weather each morning,

selecting the right clothing—waterproof for rain,

my slatted sun hat for bright afternoons, a heavy shawl

pinned round my shoulders on frosty mornings. Then a bite

to eat, choices there too, oat cakes or bread, honey

or marmalade, so many decisions

before starting the work of the day. And each day

was different. There were small blue flowers

breaking through the cracks when the weather warmed,

huge dusty turtles I had to swerve to avoid,

the occasional passerby, too far for conversation,

but close enough to study the new styles

of hat and jacket, each one’s way of walking,

a shuffling gait, a jaunty step. And then

the rock itself was never the same. My fingers

would penetrate encrustations, caress

slopes worn smooth as powdered skin,

its touch remembered these many years,

dimly remembered, like morning rain

find sparking grains that embedded themselves

in tiny dimples. But always, behind the flux,

keeping confusion in check, that constant cycle,

that slow plod upward, that weight against my chest,

measuring my muscles, my soul, inevitably followed

by a wild mad dash to the bottom, the moment

of joy, of mad release. I was often overwhelmed

by the complexity of it all, and only rarely

had a recollection of something

I had meant to do, a time when I had said

When I reach the top, then … but I could not find

anywhere, in my mind, what I had intended.

Judy Barisonzi