Lovesong

He loved her and she loved him

His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to 

He had no other appetite 

She bit him she gnawed him she sucked 

She wanted him complete inside her 

Safe and sure forever and ever 

Their little cries fluttered into the curtains 

Her eyes wanted nothing to get away 

Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows 

He gripped her hard so that life 

Should not drag her from that moment 

He wanted all future to cease 

He wanted to topple with his arms round her 

Off that moment's brink and into nothing 

Or everlasting or whatever there was 

Her embrace was an immense press

To print him into her bones 

His smiles were the garrets of a fairy palace 

Where the real world would never come 

Her smiles were spider bites 

So he would lie still till she felt hungry 

His words were occupying armies 

Her laughs were an assassin's attempts 

His looks were bullets daggers of revenge 

His glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets 

His whispers were whips and jackboots 

Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing 

His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway

Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks 

And their deep cries crawled over the floors 

Like an animal dragging a great trap 

His promises were the surgeon's gag 

Her promises took the top off his skull 

She would get a brooch made of it 

His vows pulled out all her sinews 

He showed her how to make a love-knot 

Her vows put his eyes in formalin 

At the back of her secret drawer 

Their screams stuck in the wall 

Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves 

Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop 

In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs 

In their dreams their brains took each other hostage 

In the morning they wore each other's face

Ted Hughes

Al Cabo

Al cabo, son muy pocas las palabras

que de verdad nos duelen, y muy pocas

las que consiguen alegrar el alma.

Y son también muy pocas las personas

que mueven nuestro corazon, y menos

aún las que lo mueven mucho tiempo.

Al cabo, son poquíssimas las cosas

que de verdad importan en la vida:

poder querer a alguien, que nos quieran

y no morrir después que nuestros hijos.

Amalia Bautista

in, Cuentamelo Otra Vez

Ao Fim

Ao fim são muito poucas as palavras

que nos doem a sério e muito poucas

as que conseguem alegrar a alma.

São também muito poucas as pessoas

que tocam nosso coração e menos

ainda as que o tocam muito tempo.

E ao fim são pouquíssimas as coisas

que em nossa vida a sério nos importam:

poder amar alguém, sermos amados

e não morrer depois dos nossos filhos.

Tradução: Joaquim Manuel Magalhães

Self

Once I freed myself of my duties to tasks and people and went down to the cleansing sea...
The air was like wine to my spirit,
The sky bathed my eyes with infinity,
The sun followed me, casting golden snares on the tide,
And the ocean—masses of molten surfaces, faintly gray-blue—sang to my heart...

Then I found myself, all here in the body and brain, and all there on the shore:
Content to be myself: free, and strong, and enlarged:
Then I knew the depths of myself were the depths of space.
And all living beings were of those depths (my brothers and sisters)
And that by going inward and away from duties, cities, street-cars and greetings,
I was dipping behind all surfaces, piercing cities and people,
And entering in and possessing them, more than a brother,
The surge of all life in them and in me...

So I swore I would be myself (there by the ocean)
And I swore I would cease to neglect myself, but would take myself as my mate,
Solemn marriage and deep: midnights of thought to be:
Long mornings of sacred communion, and twilights of talk,
Myself and I, long parted, clasping and married till death.


James Oppenheim 
in, Songs for the New Age

We Two

We two are left:

I with small grace reveal

distaste and bitterness; 

you with small patience

take my hands;

though effortless, 

you scald their weight

as a bowl, lined with embers,

wherein droop 

great petals of white rose,

forced by the heat

too soon to break.

We two are left:

as a blank wall, the world,

earth and the men who talk,

saying their space of life

is good and gracious, 

with eyes blank

as that blank surface 

their ignorance mistakes

for final shelter

and a resting-place. 

We two remain:

yet by what miracle,

searching within the tangles of my brain,

I ask again,

have we two met within

this maze of dædal paths

in-wound mid grievous stone,

where once I stood alone?

H.D.

(Hilda Doolittle) 

Little Gidding

Patrick Comerford

I

Midwinter spring is its own season

Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,

Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.

When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,

The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,

In windless cold that is the heart's heat,

Reflecting in a watery mirror

A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.

And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier,

Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire

In the dark time of the year. Between melting and freezing

The soul's sap quivers. There is no earth smell

Or smell of living thing. This is the spring time

But not in time's covenant. Now the hedgerow

Is blanched for an hour with transitory blossom

Of snow, a bloom more sudden

Than that of summer, neither budding nor fading,

Not in the scheme of generation.

Where is the summer, the unimaginable Zero summer?

If you came this way,

Taking the route you would be likely to take

From the place you would be likely to come from,

If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges

White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness.

It would be the same at the end of the journey,

If you came at night like a broken king,

If you came by day not knowing what you came for,

It would be the same, when you leave the rough road

And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade

And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for

Is only a shell, a husk of meaning

From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled

If at all. Either you had no purpose

Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured

And is altered in fulfilment. There are other places

Which also are the world's end, some at the sea jaws,

Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city-

But this is the nearest, in place and time,

Now and in England.

If you came this way,

Taking any route, starting from anywhere,

At any time or at any season,

It would always be the same: you would have to put off

Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,

Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity

Or carry report. You are here to kneel

Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more

Than an order of words, the conscious occupation

Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.

And what the dead had no speech for, when living,

They can tell you, being dead: the communication

Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.

Here, the intersection of the timeless moment

Is England and nowhere. Never and always.

II

Ash on an old man's sleeve

Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.

Dust in the air suspended

Marks the place where a story ended.

Dust inbreathed was a house-

The walls, the wainscot and the mouse,

The death of hope and despair,

This is the death of air.

There are flood and drouth

Over the eyes and in the mouth,

Dead water and dead sand

Contending for the upper hand.

The parched eviscerate soil

Gapes at the vanity of toil,

Laughs without mirth.

This is the death of earth.

Water and fire succeed

The town, the pasture and the weed.

Water and fire deride

The sacrifice that we denied.

Water and fire shall rot

The marred foundations we forgot,

Of sanctuary and choir.

This is the death of water and fire.

In the uncertain hour before the morning

Near the ending of interminable night

At the recurrent end of the unending

After the dark dove with the flickering tongue

Had passed below the horizon of his homing

While the dead leaves still rattled on like tin

Over the asphalt where no other sound was

Between three districts whence the smoke arose

I met one walking, loitering and hurried

As if blown towards me like the metal leaves

Before the urban dawn wind unresisting.

And as I fixed upon the down-turned face

That pointed scrutiny with which we challenge

The first-met stranger in the waning dusk

I caught the sudden look of some dead master

Whom I had known, forgotten, half recalled

Both one and many; in the brown baked features

The eyes of a familiar compound ghost

Both intimate and unidentifiable.

So I assumed a double part, and cried

And heard another's voice cry: "What! are you here?"

Although we were not. I was still the same,

Knowing myself yet being someone other--

And he a face still forming; yet the words sufficed

To compel the recognition they preceded.

And so, compliant to the common wind,

Too strange to each other for misunderstanding,

In concord at this intersection time

Of meeting nowhere, no before and after,

We trod the pavement in a dead patrol.

I said: "The wonder that I feel is easy,

Yet ease is cause of wonder. Therefore speak:

I may not comprehend, may not remember."

And he: "I am not eager to rehearse

My thoughts and theory which you have forgotten.

These things have served their purpose: let them be.

So with your own, and pray they be forgiven

By others, as I pray you to forgive

Both bad and good. Last season's fruit is eaten

And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail.

For last year's words belong to last year's language

And next year's words await another voice.

But, as the passage now presents no hindrance

To the spirit unappeased and peregrine

Between two worlds become much like each other,

So I find words I never thought to speak

In streets I never thought I should revisit

When I left my body on a distant shore.

Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us

To purify the dialect of the tribe

And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight,

Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age

To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort.

First, the cold fricton of expiring sense

Without enchantment, offering no promise

But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit

As body and sould begin to fall asunder.

Second, the conscious impotence of rage

At human folly, and the laceration

Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.

And last, the rending pain of re-enactment

Of all that you have done, and been; the shame

Of things ill done and done to others' harm

Which once you took for exercise of virtue.

Then fools' approval stings, and honour stains.

From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit

Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire

Where you must move in measure, like a dancer."

The day was breaking. In the disfigured street

He left me, with a kind of valediction,

And faded on the blowing of the horn.

III

There are three conditions which often look alike

Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:

Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment

From self and from things and from persons; and, 

growing between them, indifference

Which resembles the others as death resembles life,

Being between two lives - unflowering, between

The live and the dead nettle. This is the use of memory:

For liberation - not less of love but expanding

Of love beyond desire, and so liberation

From the future as well as the past. Thus, love of a country

Begins as an attachment to our own field of action

And comes to find that action of little importance

Though never indifferent. History may be servitude,

History may be freedom. See, now they vanish,

The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them,

To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern.

Sin is Behovely, but

All shall be well, and

All manner of thing shall be well.

If I think, again, of this place,

And of people, not wholly commendable,

Of not immediate kin or kindness,

But of some peculiar genius,

All touched by a common genius,

United in the strife which divided them;

If I think of a king at nightfall,

Of three men, and more, on the scaffold

And a few who died forgotten

In other places, here and abroad,

And of one who died blind and quiet,

Why should we celebrate

These dead men more than the dying?

It is not to ring the bell backward

Nor is it an incantation

To summon the spectre of a Rose.

We cannot revive old factions

We cannot restore old policies

Or follow an antique drum.

These men, and those who opposed them

And those whom they opposed

Accept the constitution of silence

And are folded in a single party.

Whatever we inherit from the fortunate

We have taken from the defeated

What they had to leave us - a symbol:

A symbol perfected in death.

And all shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well

By the purification of the motive

In the ground of our beseeching.

IV

The dove descending breaks the air

With flame of incandescent terror

Of which the tongues declare

The one dischage from sin and error.

The only hope, or else despair

Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre-

To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.

Love is the unfamiliar Name

Behind the hands that wove

The intolerable shirt of flame

Which human power cannot remove.

We only live, only suspire

Consumed by either fire or fire.

V

What we call the beginning is often the end

And to make and end is to make a beginning.

The end is where we start from. And every phrase

And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,

Taking its place to support the others,

The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,

An easy commerce of the old and the new,

The common word exact without vulgarity,

The formal word precise but not pedantic,

The complete consort dancing together)

Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,

Every poem an epitaph. And any action

Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat

Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.

We die with the dying:

See, they depart, and we go with them.

We are born with the dead:

See, they return, and bring us with them.

The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree

Are of equal duration. A people without history

Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern

Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails

On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel

History is now and England.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Through the unknown, unremembered gate

When the last of earth left to discover

Is that which was the beginning;

At the source of the longest river

The voice of the hidden waterfall

And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for

But heard, half-heard, in the stillness

Between two waves of the sea.

Quick now, here, now, always--

A condition of complete simplicity

(Costing not less than everything)

And all shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well

When the tongues of flames are in-folded

Into the crowned knot of fire

And the fire and the rose are one.

T. S. Eliot

in, The Little Gidding

The last of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets

Little Gidding is the fourth and final poem of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets, a series of poems that discuss time, perspective, humanity, and salvation. 
It was first published in September 1942 after being delayed for over a year because of the air-raids on Great Britain during World War II and Eliot's declining health.
The title refers to a small Anglican community in Huntingdonshire, established by Nicholas Ferrar in the 17th century and scattered during the English Civil War.
The poem uses the combined image of fire and Pentecostal fire to emphasise the need for purification and purgation. According to the poet, humanity's flawed understanding of life and turning away from God leads to a cycle of warfare, but this can be overcome by recognising the lessons of the past.
Within the poem, the narrator meets a ghost that is a combination of various poets and literary figures. Little Gidding focuses on the unity of past, present, and future, and claims that understanding this unity is necessary for salvation.

A Hermit

Experience teaches, but its lessons

may be useless. I could have done without

a few whose only by-product is grief,

which, as waste, in its final form, 

isn’t good for anything.

A helicopter beating all night above the firth,

a Druid shouting astrology

outside the off-licence will eventually

put the Ambien in ambience.

Our culture is best described as heroic. 

Courageous in self-promotion, noble

in the circulation of others’

disgrace, our preoccupation with death

in a context of immortal glory truly

epic, and the task becomes suspension

of disparate particles

lest they fall naturally into categories

whose contemplation is bad infinity.

Isolation. The odd aural hallucination. 

The meager ambit of a widow’s cabbage row 

corresponds to necessity

and also to its architect’s state of mind

at the time. Why do I not move on? Why

hang around here while grass

grows up my chimney? 

Every choice is a refusal. For Christ’s sake

I am guarding the walls. Like punctuation,

it could make all the difference. 

Karen Solie

The things that count

William Smith 

Now, dear, it isn’t the bold things,

Great deeds of valour and might,

That count the most in the summing up of life at the end of the day.

But it is the doing of old things,

Small acts that are just and right;

And doing them over and over again, no matter what others say;

In smiling at fate, when you want to cry, and in keeping at work when you want to play -

Dear, those are the things that count.

And, dear, it isn’t the new ways

Where the wonder-seekers crowd

That lead us into the land of content, or help us to find our own.

But it is keeping to true ways,

Though the music is not so loud,

And there may be many a shadowed spot where we journey along alone; 

In flinging a prayer at the face of fear, and in changing into a song a groan -

Dear, these are the things that count.

My dear, it isn’t the loud part

Of creeds that are pleasing to God,

Not the chant of a prayer, or the hum of a hymn, or a jubilant shout or song. 

But it is the beautiful proud part 

Of walking with feet faith-shod; 

And in loving, loving, loving through all, no matter how things go wrong; 

In trusting ever, though dark the day, and in keeping your hope when the way seems long -

Dear, these are the things that count.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Year's End

Now winter downs the dying of the year,

And night is all a settlement of snow;

From the soft street the rooms of houses show

A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,

Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin

And still allows some stirring down within.

I’ve known the wind by water banks to shake

The late leaves down, which frozen where they fell

And held in ice as dancers in a spell

Fluttered all winter long into a lake;

Graved on the dark in gestures of descent,

They seemed their own most perfect monument.

There was perfection in the death of ferns

Which laid their fragile cheeks against the stone

A million years. Great mammoths overthrown

Composedly have made their long sojourns,

Like palaces of patience, in the gray

And changeless lands of ice. And at Pompeii

The little dog lay curled and did not rise

But slept the deeper as the ashes rose

And found the people incomplete, and froze

The random hands, the loose unready eyes

Of men expecting yet another sun

To do the shapely thing they had not done.

These sudden ends of time must give us pause.

We fray into the future, rarely wrought

Save in the tapestries of afterthought.

More time, more time. Barrages of applause

Come muffled from a buried radio.

The New-year bells are wrangling with the snow.

Richard Wilbur

The Year

Antoine Janssens




What can be said in New-Year rhymes,

That’s not been said a thousand times?

The new years come, the old years go,

We know we dream, we dream we know.

We rise up laughing with the light,

We lie down weeping with the night.

We hug the world until it stings,

We curse it then and sigh for wings.

We live, we love, we woo, we wed,

We wreathe our brides, we sheet our dead.

We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,

And that’s the burden of the year.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

A Supermarket in California

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the
streets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.

In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit
supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations.
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles
full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! --- and you,
Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the
meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price
bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and
followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting
artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and +never passing the cashier.

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does
your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel
absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to
shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in
driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you
have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and
stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?


Allen Ginsberg

A Love That Makes Everything Else More

It’s not that she doesn’t need him

Or only wants him

Ego satisfying lust

It’s just that she doesn’t need him

To be her

She doesn’t need him to define her spaces

Or edges

She doesn’t need him to have the same dreams she does 

To tell her yes or no

So she knows what her next move should be

She doesn’t need him to buy her the world

Or make it possible for her to believe in herself 

Because actually none of that 

Is really what matters most

None of that is about two wholes sharing their energy

Lighting the world on fire

But just because she doesn’t need him to pay for her dreams

Or become the little woman to

Tending house

And maintaining expiring gender roles 

Doesn’t mean she doesn’t need him

His soul

Energy

Because the thing with her is she doesn’t need just anyone 

She needs a someone who gives her what she can’t buy or provide for herself 

To compliment who she already is

Those aspects of life whose value exceeds any monetary quality at all

Because feeling truly understood 

Accepted

Having someone choose her

As fiercely as she chooses herself 

Someone who knows her tears are a sign of strength

And doesn’t bat an eyelash 

When once again she says I changed my mind

Because he knows he’s the one thing she won’t ever change her mind about

It’s about him

The one who can calm her storms

Call her on her shit

Make her laugh until she’s gasping for breath

And then kiss her making her loose it altogether 

It’s about a soft place to land

An arm over a curved waist at the end of a long day 

The deep exhale 

And eyes that continually look at her like it’s the first time

Every time

It’s needing him to understand that what she needs the most

Isn’t found

Will never be found

In anything he can give her

But in simply who he is

The space he shows up in for her

And the way that he gives her something no one else

Nothing else ever has

The way he

Makes life just a little more beautiful 

A little more full of light

Because for her that’s all she’s ever needed

A love

That just makes everything else more.

Kate Rose

O DA NENA DE PEL BRANCA COMO A NEVE

Jamshid Tajdolat






13

Aquela muller estaba afeita

A torcer o destino

Cando non lle gustaba

O que intuía

Nel

Aquela muller rebelábase

Cada maná

Diante dun espello

Co seu cabelo salvaxe

Cubrindo as cicatrices da vida que levara

Antes de poõ.erse teas con encaixe

Refaixo e saia

Aquela muller querería berrar

Que baixo a pel transparente da casa real

Corría o sangue sucio das veas

Azuis

E que non está ben

Amosar a podredume

Porén

Non se arriscaba a que a acusasen

De terrorismo, desacato ou bruxería

Aquela muller podería abrir

Calquera porta

Podería ter

Calquera aspecto

Calquera idade

Calquera cor

No sangue

Vermello

Coma os labios da princesa viva

Violeta

Coma os labios da princesa morta

Aquela muller nunca matou a ninguén

Non por falta de vontade

Nin de oportunidade

Ata ela sabía que era o máis doado

E, polo tanto,

O menos interesante

Aquela muller non desempeñba ningún papel

Foi ela mesma

Quen quixo ser

PAULA CARBALLEIRA

in, HAI QUEN ESCOLLE OS CAMIÑOS MÁIS LONGOS

The Moment

Margaret Atwood

by Tim Walker

The moment when, after many years

of hard work and a long voyage,

you stand in the centre of your room,

house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,

knowing at last how you got there,

and say, I own this,

is the same moment the trees unloose

their soft arms from around you,

the birds take back their language,

the cliffs fissure and collapse,

the air moves back from you like a wave

and you can’t breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.

You were a visitor, time after time

Climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.

We never belonged to you.

You never found us.

It was always the other way round.

~ Margaret Atwood

Poem 12 in Gitanjali

Carlo Cafferini







I have been traveling long

My way is also long

When I had first started it was early dawn.

From planet to planet, from star to star

I have left my footprints along a winding path

Through so many hills and dales

Through so many lands.

To come close one has to travel far

It is very difficult indeed

But not to one who is straight at heart.

Traversing many alien countries

The traveler comes to his own land at last

Only after wandering in the outside world

One can find one’s own inner God.

To say, ‘Here you are’,

I looked in so many places, so many ways I walked

But you are there everywhere in this world

Which we flood with tears

Crying, ‘Where are you, O where!’

Rabindranath Tagore

Poem 14

in, The Collection Gitimalya

Transcreation by Kumud Biswas

Encontrei outra tradução, que partilho aqui:

The time that my journey takes is long and the way of it long.

I came out on the chariot of the first gleam of light, and pursued my
voyage through the wildernesses of worlds leaving my track on many a star and planet.

It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself,
and that training is the most intricate which leads to the utter simplicity of a tune.

The traveler has to knock at every alien door to come to his own,
and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.

My eyes strayed far and wide before I shut them and said `Here art thou!'

The question and the cry `Oh, where?' melt into tears of a thousand
streams and deluge the world with the flood of the assurance `I am!'



Rabindranath Tagore
in, Gitanjali
Poem 12
Translation by Bertram Kottmann

Rabindranath Tagore: Gitanjali

IV

LIFE OF MY LIFE, I shall ever try to keep my body pure, knowing that thy living touch is upon all my limbs.

I shall ever try to keep all untruths out from my thoughts, knowing that thou art that truth which has kindled the light of reason in my mind.

I shall ever try to drive all evils away from my heart and keep my love in flower, knowing that thou hast thy seat in the inmost shrine of my heart.

And it shall be my endeavour to reveal thee in my actions, knowing it is thy power gives me strength to act.

XII

THE TIME THAT my journey takes is long and the way of it long.

I came out on the chariot of the first gleam of light, and pursued my voyage through the wildernesses of worlds leaving my track on many a star and planet.

It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself, and that training is the most intricate which leads to the utter simplicity of a tune.

The traveller has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.

My eyes strayed far and wide before I shut them and said, “Here art thou!”

The question and the cry, “Oh, where?” melt into tears of a thousand streams and deluge the world with the flood of the assurance, “I am!”

XXXI

“PRISONER, TELL ME, who was it that bound you?”

“It was my master,” said the prisoner. “I thought I could outdo everybody in the world in wealth and power, and I amassed in my own treasure house the money due to my king. When sleep overcame me I lay upon the bed that was for my lord, and on waking up I found I was a prisoner in my own treasure house.”

“Prisoner, tell me who was it that wrought this unbreakable chain?”

“It was I,” said the prisoner, “who forged this chain very carefully. I thought my invincible power would hold the world captive leaving me in a freedom undisturbed. Thus night and day I worked at the chain with huge fires and cruel hard strokes. When at last the work was done and the links were complete and unbreakable, I found that it held me in its grip.”

XXXV

WHERE THE MIND is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action—
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

XXXVII

I THOUGHT THAT my voyage had come to its end at the last limit of my power—that the path before me was closed, that provisions were exhausted and the time come to take shelter in a silent obscurity.

But I find that thy will knows no end in me. And when old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart; and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders.

 XLVIII

THE MORNING SEA of silence broke into ripples of bird songs; and the flowers were all merry by the roadside; and the wealth of gold was scattered through the rift of the clouds while we busily went on our way and paid no heed. We sang no glad songs nor played; we went not to the village for barter; we spoke not a word nor smiled; we lingered not on the way. We quickened our pace more and more as the time sped by.

The sun rose to the mid sky and doves cooed in the shade. Withered leaves danced and whirled in the hot air of noon. The shepherd boy drowsed and dreamed in the shadow of the banyan tree, and I laid myself down by the water and stretched my tired limbs on the grass.

My companions laughed at me in scorn; they held their heads high and hurried on; they never looked back nor rested; they vanished in the distant blue haze. They crossed many meadows and hills, and passed through strange, faraway countries. All honour to you, heroic host of the interminable path! Mockery and reproach pricked me to rise, but found no response in me. I gave myself up for lost in the depth of a glad humiliation—in the shadow of a dim delight.

The repose of the sun-embroidered green gloom slowly spread over my heart. I forgot for what I had travelled, and I surrendered my mind without struggle to the maze of shadows and songs.

At last, when I woke from my slumber and opened my eyes, I saw thee standing by me, flooding my sleep with thy smile. How I had feared that the path was long and wearisome, and the struggle to reach thee was hard!

LIV

I ASKED NOTHING from thee; I uttered not my name to thine ear. When thou took’st thy leave I stood silent. I was alone by the well where the shadow of the tree fell aslant, and the women had gone home with their brown earthen pitchers full to the brim. They called me and shouted, “Come with us, the morning is wearing on to noon.” But I languidly lingered awhile lost in the midst of vague musings.

I heard not thy steps as thou camest. Thine eyes were sad when they fell on me; thy voice was tired as thou spokest low— “Ah, I am a thirsty traveller.” I started up from my daydreams and poured water from my jar on thy joined palms. The leaves rustled overhead; the cuckoo sang from the unseen dark, and perfume of babla flowers came from the bend of the road.

I stood speechless with shame when my name thou didst ask. Indeed, what had I done for thee to keep me in remembrance? But the memory that I could give water to thee to allay thy thirst will cling to my heart and enfold it in sweetness. The morning hour is late, the bird sings in weary notes, neem leaves rustle overhead and I sit and think and think.

LXXX

I AM LIKE a remnant of a cloud of autumn uselessly roaming in the sky,
O my sun ever- glorious!

Thy touch has not yet melted my vapour, making me one with thy light, and thus I count months and years separated from thee.

If this be thy wish and if this be thy play, then take this fleeting emptiness of mine, paint it with colours, gild it with gold, float it on the wanton wind and spread it in varied wonders.

And again when it shall be thy wish to end this play at night, I shall melt and vanish away in the dark, or it may be in a smile of the white morning, in a coolness of purity transparent.

LXXXVI

DEATH, THY SERVANT, is at my door. He has crossed the unknown sea and brought thy call to my home.

The night is dark and my heart is fearful—yet I will take up the lamp, open my gates and bow to him my welcome. It is thy messenger who stands at my door.

I will worship him with folded hands, and with tears. I will worship him placing at his feet the treasure of my heart.

He will go back with his errand done, leaving a dark shadow on my morning; and in my desolate home only my forlorn self will remain as my last offering to thee.

XCV

I WAS NOT aware of the moment when I first crossed the threshold of this life.

What was the power that made me open out into this vast mystery like a bud in the forest at—midnight!

When in the morning I looked upon the light I felt in a moment that I was no stranger in this world, that the inscrutable without name and form had taken me in its arms in the form of my own mother.

Even so, in death the same unknown will appear as ever known to me. And because I love this life, I know I shall love death as well. The child cries out when from the right breast the mother takes it away, in the very next moment to find in the left one its consolation.



Rabindranath Tagore 
in, Gitanjali




NOTA:
Gitanjali, composed from “gita” or song, and “anjali” or offering, the title thus means, “An offering of songs”. The English Gitanjali (1912) is a volume of 103 poems, selected by Tagore from his huge corpus of Bengali verse.
Indeed, W.B. Yeats wrote in an introduction to the collection, “[the poems] have stirred my blood as nothing for years …”

Desiderata

Vá placidamente por entre o barulho e a pressa e lembre-se da paz que pode haver no silêncio.
Tanto quanto possível, sem sacrificar seus princípios, conviva bem com todas as pessoas.
Diga a sua verdade calma e claramente e ouça os outros, mesmo os estúpidos e ignorantes, pois eles também têm sua história. Evite as pessoas vulgares e agressivas, elas são um tormento para o espírito.
Se você se comparar aos outros, pode tornar-se vaidoso ou amargo, porque sempre existirão pessoas superiores e inferiores a você.

Usufrua suas conquistas, assim como seus planos. Manter-se interessado em sua própria carreira, mesmo que humilde, é um bem verdadeiro na sorte incerta dos tempos.
Tenha cautela em seus negócios, pois o mundo é cheio de artifícios, mas não deixe isso te cegar à virtude que existe. Muitos lutam por ideais nobres e por toda parte a vida é cheia de heroísmo.

Seja você mesmo. Sobretudo, não finja afeições.
Não seja cínico sobre o amor, porque, apesar de toda aridez e desencantamento, ele é tão perene quanto a relva.
Aceite gentilmente o conselho dos anos, renunciando com benevolência às coisas da juventude.
Alimente a força do espírito para ter proteção em um súbito infortúnio. Mas não se torture com temores imaginários. Muitos medos nascem da solidão e do cansaço.

Adote uma disciplina sadia, mas não seja exigente demais. Seja gentil consigo mesmo.
Você é filho do Universo, assim como as árvores e as estrelas. Você tem o direito de estar aqui.
E mesmo que não lhe pareça claro, o Universo, com certeza, está evoluindo como deveria.
Portanto, esteja em paz com Deus, não importa como você O conceba.
E, quaisquer que sejam as suas lutas e aspirações no ruidoso tumulto da vida, mantenha a paz em sua alma. Apesar de todas as falsidades, maldades e sonhos desfeitos, este ainda é um belo mundo. Alegre-se. Empenhe-se em ser feliz!



Max Ehrmann

Editor Whedon

To be able to see every side of every question;

To be on every side, to be everything, to be nothing long;

To pervert truth, to ride it for a purpose,

To use great feelings and passions of the human family

For base designs, for cunning ends,

To wear a mask like the Greek actors—

Your eight-page paper—behind which you huddle,

Bawling through the megaphone of big type:

“This is I, the giant.”

Thereby also living the life of a sneak-thief,

Poisoned with the anonymous words

Of your clandestine soul.

To scratch dirt over scandal for money,

And exhume it to the winds for revenge,

Or to sell papers

Crushing reputations, or bodies, if need be,

To win at any cost, save your own life.

To glory in demoniac power, ditching civilization,

As a paranoiac boy puts a log on the track

And derails the express train.

To be an editor, as I was—

Then to lie here close by the river over the place

Where the sewage flows from the village,

And the empty cans and garbage are dumped,

And abortions are hidden.

Edgar Lee Masters

TO IMAGINATION

Ewa Cwikla 

When weary with the long day's care,

And earthly change from pain to pain ,

And lost, and ready to despair,

Thy kind voice calls me back again:

Oh, my true friend! I am not lone,

While then canst speak with such a tone!

So hopeless is the world without;

The world within I doubly prize;

Thy world, where guile, and bate, and doubt,

And cold suspicion never rise;

Where thou, and 1, and Liberty,

Have undisputed sovereignty.

What matters it, that all around,

Danger, and guilt, and darkness lie,

lf but within our bosom's bound

We hold a bright, untroubled sky,

Warm with ten thousand mingled rays

Of suns that know no winter days?

Reason, indeed, may oft complain

For Nature's sad reality,

And tell the suffering heart, how vain

lts cherished dreams must always be;

And Truth may rudely trample down

The flowers of Fancy, newly-blown:

But, thou art ever there, to bring

The hovering vision back, and breathe

New glories o'er the blighted spring,

And call a lovelier Life from Death.

And whisper, with a voice divine,

Of real worlds, as bright as thine.

I trust no to thy phantom bliss,

Yet, still, in evening's quiet hour

With never-failing thankfullness,

I welcome thee, Benignant Power;

Sure solacer of human cares,

And sweeter hope, when hope despairs!

À IMAGINAÇÃO

Quando da labuta diária estou cansada,
E do terreno devir de dor em dor,
E perdida me sinto, quase desesperada,
Tua voz terna chama-me ao labor:
Ah, fiel amiga! Não estou só,
Enquanto puderes falar-me nessa voz!

Nada espero do mundo exterior;
O mundo interior, prezo-o a dobrar;
O teu mundo, onde dúvida, ódio, desamor
E fria suspeição jamais hão-de medrar;
Onde tu, e eu, e a Liberdade,
Temos incontestada e suprema autoridade.

Que importa, se à nossa volta
Paira o perigo, a culpa, o breu,
Se há em nossa alma à solta
Um radioso e sereno céu,
Aquecido por dez mil raios luminosos
De sóis que não conhecem dias invernosos?

Na verdade, pode queixar-se a Razão
Da triste realidade da própria Natureza,
E dizer ao amargurado coração
Que são vãos os sonhos que ela tanto preza;
E pode a Verdade espezinhar rudemente,
Da Fantasia, as flores imanescentes:

Mas, atenta, tu refreias sempre
Meus voos delirantes e, enquanto
Derramas novas glórias sobre a nefanda nascente,
Extrais da Morte uma Vida de maior encanto.
E com voz divina me falas, ciciante,
De mundos reais, como o teu tão fascinantes.

Não me rendo à tua fátua bênção;
Porém, no silêncio do entardecer,
Com indefecível gratidão,
Eu te acolho, Benigno Poder;
Consolo, se a vida nos exaspera,
Esperança mais doce, quando a esperança desespera!



EMILY BRONTË (ELLIS BELL)
in, POEMAS ESCOLHIDOS DAS IRMÃS BRONTË
tradução de ANA MARIA CHAVES