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Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

By Robert Frost

 

 

My Sad Self

 

BY ALLEN GINSBERG

Sometimes when my eyes are red

I go up on top of the RCA Building

          and gaze at my world, Manhattan—

                     my buildings, streets I’ve done feats in,

                           lofts, beds, coldwater flats

—on Fifth Ave below which I also bear in mind,

          its ant cars, little yellow taxis, men

               walking the size of specks of wool—

   Panorama of the bridges, sunrise over Brooklyn machine,

          sun go down over New Jersey where I was born

             & Paterson where I played with ants—

   my later loves on 15th Street,

          my greater loves of Lower East Side,

             my once fabulous amours in the Bronx

                                        faraway—

   paths crossing in these hidden streets,

      my history summed up, my absences

             and ecstasies in Harlem—

      —sun shining down on all I own

       in one eyeblink to the horizon

               in my last eternity—

                                     matter is water.

Sad,

      I take the elevator and go

             down, pondering,

and walk on the pavements staring into all man’s

                                           plateglass, faces,

             questioning after who loves,

      and stop, bemused

             in front of an automobile shopwindow

      standing lost in calm thought,

             traffic moving up & down 5th Avenue blocks behind me

                      waiting for a moment when …

Time to go home & cook supper & listen to

                      the romantic war news on the radio

                                     … all movement stops

& I walk in the timeless sadness of existence,

      tenderness flowing thru the buildings,

             my fingertips touching reality’s face,

      my own face streaked with tears in the mirror

             of some window—at dusk—

                                     where I have no desire—

      for bonbons—or to own the dresses or Japanese

                      lampshades of intellection—

Confused by the spectacle around me,

          Man struggling up the street

                     with packages, newspapers,

                                           ties, beautiful suits

                     toward his desire

          Man, woman, streaming over the pavements

                     red lights clocking hurried watches &

                            movements at the curb—

And all these streets leading

          so crosswise, honking, lengthily,

                            by avenues

          stalked by high buildings or crusted into slums

                            thru such halting traffic

                                           screaming cars and engines

so painfully to this

          countryside, this graveyard

                     this stillness

                                           on deathbed or mountain

          once seen

                            never regained or desired

                                           in the mind to come

where all Manhattan that I’ve seen must disappear.

New York, October 1958

 

 

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

By Robert Frost

 

 

 

 

Water…

foto by bulimunda

The water understands 

Civilization well; 

It wets my foot, but prettily, 

It chills my life, but wittily, 

It is not disconcerted, 

It is not broken-hearted: 

Well used, it decketh joy, 

Adorneth, doubleth joy: 

Ill used, it will destroy, 

In perfect time and measure 

With a face of golden pleasure 

Elegantly destroy.

 

BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON

 

 

A nós ligam-nos o nosso passado e o nosso futuro. Passamos quase todo o nosso tempo livre e também quanto do nosso tempo de trabalho a deixá-los subir e descer na balança. O que o futuro excede em dimensão, substitui o passado em peso, e no fim não se distinguem os dois, a meninice torna-se clara mais tarde, tal como é o futuro, e o fim do futuro já é de facto vivido em todos os nossos suspiros e assim se torna passado. Assim quase se fecha este círculo em cujo rebordo andamos. Bem, este círculo pertence-nos de facto, mas só nos pertence enquanto nos mantivermos nele; se nos afastarmos para o lado uma vez que seja, por distracção, por esquecimento, por susto, por espanto, por cansaço, eis que já o perdemos no espaço; até agora tínhamos tido o nariz metido na corrente do tempo, agora retrocedemos, ex-nadadores, caminhantes actuais, e estamos perdidos. Estamos do lado de fora da lei, ninguém sabe disso, mas todos nos tratam de acordo com isso. 

Franz Kafka, in ‘Diário (1910)’

 

 

 

A duração, seja os séculos para as civilizações, seja os anos e as dezenas de anos para o indivíduo, tem uma função darwiniana de eliminação do inapto. O que está apto para tudo é eterno. É apenas nisto que reside o valor daquilo a que chamamos a experiência. Mas a mentira é uma armadura com a qual o homem, muitas vezes, permite ao inapto que existe em si sobreviver aos acontecimentos que, sem essa armadura, o aniquilariam (bem como ao orgulho para sobreviver às humilhações), e esta armadura é como que segregada pelo inapto para prevenir uma situação de perigo (o orgulho, perante a humilhação, adensa a ilusão interior). Subsiste na alma uma espécie de fagocitose; tudo o que é ameaçado pelo tempo, para não morrer, segrega a mentira e, proporcionalmente, o perigo de morte.

Simone Weil, in ‘A Gravidade e a Graça’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Esta velha angústia, 
Esta angústia que trago há séculos em mim, 
Transbordou da vasilha, 
Em lágrimas, em grandes imaginações, 
Em sonhos em estilo de pesadelo sem terror, 
Em grandes emoções súbitas sem sentido nenhum. 

Transbordou. 
Mal sei como conduzir-me na vida 
Com este mal-estar a fazer-me pregas na alma! 
Se ao menos endoidecesse deveras! 
Mas não: é este estar entre, 
Este quase, 
Este poder ser que…, 
Isto. 

Um internado num manicômio é, ao menos, alguém, 
Eu sou um internado num manicômio sem manicômio. 
Estou doido a frio, 
Estou lúcido e louco, 
Estou alheio a tudo e igual a todos: 
Estou dormindo desperto com sonhos que são loucura 
Porque não são sonhos. 
Estou assim… 

Pobre velha casa da minha infância perdida! 
Quem te diria que eu me desacolhesse tanto! 
Que é do teu menino? Está maluco. 
Que é de quem dormia sossegado sob o teu teto provinciano? 
Está maluco. 
Quem de quem fui? Está maluco. Hoje é quem eu sou. 

Se ao menos eu tivesse uma religião qualquer! 
Por exemplo, por aquele manipanso 
Que havia em casa, lá nessa, trazido de África. 
Era feiíssimo, era grotesco, 
Mas havia nele a divindade de tudo em que se crê. 
Se eu pudesse crer num manipanso qualquer — 
Júpiter, Jeová, a Humanidade — 
Qualquer serviria, 
Pois o que é tudo senão o que pensamos de tudo? 

Estala, coração de vidro pintado! 

Álvaro de Campos, in “Poemas”
Heterónimo de Fernando Pessoa

 

 

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! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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…