Translation

 

BY DEIRDRE O’CONNOR

Though there’s no such thing as a “self,” I missed it— 

the fiction of it and how I felt believing in it mildly 

like a book an old love sent with an inscription 

in his hand, whatever it meant, 

After such knowledge, what forgiveness . . . 

—the script of it like the way my self felt 

learning German words by chance—Mitgefühl, 

Unheimlichkeit—and the trailing off that happened 

because I knew only the feelings, abstract 

and international, like ghosts or connotations 

lacking a grammar, a place to go: 

this was the way my self felt when it started 

falling apart: each piece of it clipped 

from a garden vaguely remembered 

by somebody unrecognizable— 

such a strange bouquet that somebody sent 

to nobody else, a syntax of blossoms.

 

Lost Desire

BY MELEAGER

TRANSLATED BY WILLIAM M. HARDINGE

Love brought by night a vision to my bed, 

One that still wore the vesture of a child 

But eighteen years of age – who sweetly smiled 

Till of the lovely form false hopes were bred 

And keen embraces wild. 

Ah! for the lost desire that haunts me yet, 

Till mine eyes fail in sleep that finds no more 

That fleeting ghost! Oh, lovelorn heart, give o’er – 

Cease thy vain dreams of beauty’s warmth – forget 

The face thou longest for! 

Anúncios

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BY John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, 

   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; 

Conspiring with him how to load and bless 

   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; 

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, 

   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; 

      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells 

   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, 

And still more, later flowers for the bees, 

Until they think warm days will never cease, 

      For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells. 

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? 

   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find 

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, 

   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; 

Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep, 

   Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers: 

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep 

   Steady thy laden head across a brook; 

   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, 

      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours. 

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?

   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,— 

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, 

   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; 

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn 

   Among the river sallows, borne aloft 

      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; 

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; 

   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft 

   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; 

      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies

 

 

I’ve heard of yogis talk of a divine
emptiness,
the body free of its base desires,

some coiled and luminous god
in all of us
waiting to be discovered…

and always I’ve pivoted,

followed Blake’s road of excess
to the same source
and know how it feels to achieve

nothing, the nothing that exists
after accomplishment.
And I’ve known the emptiness

of nothing to say, no reason to move,
those mornings I’ve built
a little cocoon with the bedcovers

and lived in it, almost happily,
because what fools
the body more than warmth?

And more than once

I’ve shared an emptiness with someone
and learned
how generous I could be — here,

take this, take this…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Roland Barthes

 

O fascismo não é impedir-nos de dizer, é obrigar-nos a dizer.

 

 

Sim, o homem é o seu próprio fim. E é o seu único fim. Se quer ser qualquer coisa, tem de ser nesta vida. Agora sei, aliás, que embora conquistadores falem algumas vezes de vencer e de exceder, o que eles querem sempre dizer é «excederem-se». Suponho que sabem o que isto quer dizer. Em certos momentos, todos os homens se sentem iguais a um deus. É assim, pelo menos, que se diz. Mas isto vem do facto de eles terem sentido, num instante, a espantosa grandeza do espírito humano. Os conquistadores são somente aqueles homens que sentem a sua força, o bastante para terem a certeza de viver constantemente nessas alturas e na plena consciência dessa grandeza. É uma questão de aritmética, de mais ou de menos. Os conquistadores são os que podem mais. Mas não podem mais do que o próprio homem quando ele o quer. É por isso que eles nunca deixam o crisol humano, mergulhando no mais ardente da alma das revoluções. 

Albert Camus, in “O Mito de Sísifo”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ser marginal. Não ser fora-da-lei por desprezo da norma comum. Por amoralidade, miserabilismo, ou abjecção. Ser apenas do lado da vida em que não passa muita gente, se é quase anónimo, fora do alvo que é visado pela notoriedade, curiosidade pública, grande reputação. Ser em humildade, na discrição de nós, na curta dimensão de nós. Não é por comodismo, orgulhosa modéstia, ressentimento. Não por nada disso ou outras coisas disso, mas só para nos não perdermos de nós, não nos esbanjarmos na invasão da dissipação alheia. Não por nada disso mas só pela economia do pouco que nos pertence e mal dá para abastecer uma vida. Ser marginal – sê marginal. Afecta a ti próprio o espaço que é para ti e para ti te foi dado. Na intimidade de ti, na reserva de ti, na pobreza de ti. O mais que viesse e te invadisse o teu espaço, que é que te dava? A ampliação do teu rumor na amplificação alheia dele, seria alheio e não teu. A tua voz é breve, não a amplies ao que não é. E o teu pensar, o teu sentir, o teu ser. Não os sejas mais do que és. E então verdadeiramente serás. 

Vergílio Ferreira, in ‘Conta-Corrente IV’

 

 

 

BY Walt Whitman

On the beach at night, 

Stands a child with her father, 

Watching the east, the autumn sky. 

Up through the darkness, 

While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading, 

Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky, 

Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east, 

Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter, 

And nigh at hand, only a very little above, 

Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades. 

From the beach the child holding the hand of her father, 

Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all, 

Watching, silently weeps. 

Weep not, child, 

Weep not, my darling, 

With these kisses let me remove your tears, 

The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious, 

They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition, 

Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge, 

They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again, 

The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure, 

The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine. 

Then dearest child mournest thou only for Jupiter? 

Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars? 

Something there is, 

(With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper, 

I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,) 

Something there is more immortal even than the stars, 

(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,) 

Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter 

Longer than sun or any revolving satellite, 

Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades. 

 

 

 

 

by Alicia Ostriker

They remember the dead who died in the resistance.   

It is in sweet tones that they speak of them.   

They shake their heads, still, after the dinner

Walking back to the car, while an evening snow   

That has started windlessly, white from pearl-gray,   

Falls into streets that are already slushy.

They shake their heads, as we do when there is something   

Too strange to believe,

Or as a beast does, stunned by a blow.

“To die in the resistance,”   they say, “is to fail   

To turn into slush, to escape this ugliness.   

It is at once to leap, a creamy swan,

Upward.”   Three voices: oboe, piano, cello.

The high one wishes to be pleasing, the middle   

To be practical, the deep to persevere.

A movie theater lobby in front of them

Throws its light on the sidewalk, like a woman   

Swiftly emptying a bucket of water:

The flakes are falling in its yellow light.   

Then they pass a café, its light red neon,   

Then a closed pharmacy.

                                    —They pull sharp air

Into their lungs, a pain that is a pleasure.   

“Try to live as if there were no God,”   

They don’t say, but they mean.

A recollection of purity, a clean

Handkerchief each man feels in his own pocket,

Perturbs them, slows their pace down. Now they have seen

A yellow stain on a pile of old snow

Between two parked cars, where a man has peed:   

The resistance. The falling flakes, falling

On the men’s hats. And now

The snow grows heavier, falls on their stooping shoulders.

 

 

 

 

BY Paul Laurence Dunbar

We wear the mask that grins and lies, 

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,— 

This debt we pay to human guile; 

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, 

And mouth with myriad subtleties. 

Why should the world be over-wise, 

In counting all our tears and sighs? 

Nay, let them only see us, while 

       We wear the mask. 

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries 

To thee from tortured souls arise. 

We sing, but oh the clay is vile 

Beneath our feet, and long the mile; 

But let the world dream otherwise, 

       We wear the mask!

 

When life seems gray

And short of fizz

It seems that way

Because it is.

BY  Margaret Fishback

 

 

IF….

By Rudyard Kipling

(‘Brother Square-Toes’—Rewards and Fairies)

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!