segunda-feira, 30 de novembro de 2020

 “Se tratarmos as pessoas como elas devem ser, nós as ajudamos a se tornarem o que elas são capazes de ser” 

Johan Wolfgang Von Goethe

domingo, 29 de novembro de 2020


 

 GUERRA DO ÓPIO 1840


''entregue a lamentações''

Mao Tsetung. Sobre a prática. Sobre a contradição e outros textos. Textos Políticos. 1ª Edição, 1974. Editorial Minerva., p. 132

de.sas.sis.ti.do

concatenar


Sam Gopal - Escalator - Yesterlove


 

comiserar

Where We Are and Where We


Fernando Pessoa

[Carta a Armando Teixeira Rebelo - 2 Ago. 1907] - T

[Carta a Armando Teixeira Rebelo -2 Ago. 1907]

Hotel Brito, Portalegre

22 de Agosto de 1907

.

Venerável porção de existência terrena!

Nuns poucos momentos de concatenada actividade mental, não desassistida dos fumos carnais da bebida alcoólica — nada mais nada menos do que vinho — não exclusivo a esta localidade, a minha alma sentiu, como um suspiro mental, a necessidade de dar expressão do seu presente estado e tendências a um cérebro amigável como o teu.

Solitário e silente no meu transitório lugar de existência no hotel mencionado no cabeçalho desta explosiva epístola de uma sobrecarregada alma, sentindo em redor de mim um mundo moralmente frio e materialmente quente — abaixo de zero quanto à minha alma e não longe dos 40 quanto ao meu corpo — nestas circunstâncias angustiosas e inspiradoras veio até mim a ideia de que talvez o processo desta composição epistolar possa ser subjectivamente conducente a um alívio do meu fardo terreno neste momento, possa ser o «bálsamo em Gilead» sonhado por Poe, para o meu espírito desgarrado.

Daí esta carta.

Portalegre é um lugar em que tudo quanto um forasteiro pode fazer é cansar-se de não fazer nada. As suas qualidades componentes parecem-me conter (depois de uma profunda análise), em quantidades relativas e incertas, calor, frio, semiesPãholismo e nada. O vinho é bom (embora não daqui, creio), mas é decididamente alcoólico, especialmente quando a jarra de água está na outra extremidade da mesa e tu te esqueces (quer dizer, eu me esqueço) de o pedir. O estilo desta carta é disso uma prova decisiva. Farei dela registo, para que uma tão brilhante produção do meu espírito não se perca no correio.

A desmontagem e embalagem da tipografia está a levar um tempo danado — poeticamente falando, é claro. Apesar disso, os homens têm trabalhado bastante depressa e tenho os olhado e observado com a maior das energias.

Acredito sinceramente que, se tivesse que aqui ficar um mês, teria de ir para Lisboa e depois para o Hotel Bombarda. Mal podes imaginar o hiperaborrecimento, o ultra-estafanço-de-tudo, a absoluta sensação de o-que-há-de-fazer-um-tipo num sítio destes, que reinam no meu espírito!

Encontrei um livro para ler. Estou ansioso por voltar para Lisboa; penso contudo que ainda terei de ficar aqui mais três dias.

    O Alentejo visto do comboio

    Nada com nada em sua volta

    E algumas árvores no meio,

    Nenhuma das quais claramente verde,

    Onde não há vista de rio ou de flor.

    Se há um inferno, eu encontrei-o,

    Pois se não está aqui, onde Diabo estará?

Passa bem, ó tu

F. Nogueira Pessoa

P. S. — Não me escrevas para Portalegre. Poderei já aqui não estar. Espera o meu regresso a Lisboa. Aí falaremos então.

2-8-1907

Escritos Íntimos, Cartas e Páginas Autobiográficas. Fernando Pessoa. (Introduções, organização e notas de António Quadros.) Mem Martins: Publ. Europa-América, 1986.

  - 56.

Tradução de António Quadros.

1ª publ. in Vida e Obra de Fernando Pessoa - História de uma Geração. João Gaspar Simões. Lisboa: Bertrand, 1951.

quarta-feira, 25 de novembro de 2020

Arcade Fire - Song on the Beach; Photograph 1 Hour (Her Movie)

 DIEGO

Vi, escritos na relva, os mais belos poemas de uma vida. Sob o clamor das vozes, ouvi a tua voz naquele bairro do sul distante, buenos aires do perdido amor, com as suas milongas, com os seus punhais dolentes de mate e suor.
Tu não crescias.
Eras puro, com a beleza por dentro, essa terrível beleza que arde no coração.
De muito longe vieram contigo o júbilo e as altas flores da magia.
De repente, tudo enlouquecia.
O mundo era um prado vertiginoso, rectangular e verde, com a demência à volta.
Em junho, o sol explodia sobre as cabeças delirantes mas eu sei que a morte chegava depressa, batendo à porta da tua noite.
Eu também parti nas asas brancas de um sonho, e, depois, numa lágrima de imenso mar, disse-te adeus, apertando-te secretamente na solidão dos meus dias.
Tudo passa velozmente na estação do sol e, em setembro, já corremos as cortinas dos salões, regressando ao outono, quando os cabelos adquirem a neve do tempo que fica.
Ave que cruzas a pampa onde a saudade mata com os seus ferros incandescentes, traz-me novas do meu amigo, fala-me do vento que o viu nascer ao lado da morte da alegria.
Agora, que é tarde, só te posso recordar, sentado algures, na fria pedra dos lugares vazios. Agora, és apenas um menino triste, abandonado pelas mãos de Deus.
JOSÉ AGOSTINHO BAPTISTA
1990

 

“I think that writers are made, not born or created out of dreams of childhood trauma—that becoming a writer (or a painter, actor, director, dancer, and so on) is a direct result of conscious will. Of course there has to be some talent involved, but talent is a dreadfully cheap commodity, cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work and study; a constant process of honing. Talent is a dull knife that will cut nothing unless it is wielded with great force—a force so great the knife is not really cutting at all but bludgeoning and breaking (and after two or three of these gargantuan swipes it may succeed in breaking itself…which may be what happened to such disparate writers as Ross Lockridge and Robert E. Howard). Discipline and constant work are the whetstones upon which the dull knife of talent is honed until it becomes sharp enough, hopefully, to cut through even the toughest meat and gristle. No writer, painter, or actor—no artist—is ever handed a sharp knife (although a few are handed almighty big ones; the name we give to the artist with the big knife is “genius”), and we hone with varying degrees of zeal and aptitude.”


― Stephen King, Danse Macabre

peaky blinders


 

Lubrifiant Social Merlot

con.tu.bér.ni.o

common man

fishmonger

marvelously

''copious tears''

Evelyn Waugh: 'I can only be funny when I'm complaining'

 


 

''I feel a little depressed ''

misleading

full of deceptions

Things Have Changed


A worried man with a worried mind
No one in front of me and nothing behind
There's a woman on my lap and she's drinking champagne
Got white skin, got assassin's eyes
I'm looking up into the sapphire tinted skies
I'm well dressed, waiting on the last train
Standing on the gallows with my head in a noose
Any minute now I'm expecting all hell to break loose
People are crazy and times are strange
I'm locked in tight, I'm out of range
I used to care, but things have changed
This place ain't doing me any good
I'm in the wrong town, I should be in Hollywood
Just for a second there I thought I saw something move
Gonna take dancing lessons do the jitterbug rag
Ain't no shortcuts, gonna dress in drag
Only a fool in here would think he's got anything to prove
Lotta water under the bridge, lotta other stuff too
Don't get up gentlemen, I'm only passing through
People are crazy and times are strange
I'm locked in tight, I'm out of range
I used to care, but things have changed
I've been walking forty miles of bad road
If the bible is right, the world will explode
I've been trying to get as far away from myself as I can
Some things are too hot to touch
The human mind can only stand so much
You can't win with a losing hand
Feel like falling in love with the first woman I meet
Putting her in a wheel barrow and wheeling her down the street
People are crazy and times are strange
I'm locked in tight, I'm out of range
I used to care, but things have changed
I hurt easy, I just don't show it
You can hurt someone and not even know it
The next sixty seconds could be like an eternity
Gonna get lowdown, gonna fly high
All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie
I'm love with a woman who don't even appeal to me
Mr. Jinx and Miss Lucy, they jumped in the lake
I'm not that eager to make a mistake
People are crazy and times are strange
I'm locked in tight, I'm out of range
I used to care, but things have changed
Compositores: Bob Dylan

Fiery and tempestuous

Self-Portrait (Asleep)




''We all know that Andy Warhol made a film lasting more than 5 hours of a man sleeping. After viewing it, I asked myself, ‘What would happen if I removed Warhol’s tedious passages?’ This is why I decided to film myself sleeping during 10 hours with an automatic shutter that took a frame every 10 seconds to make the only film directed by a sleeping man.” 

Luis Ospina

pequenos artifícios da conduta

''genética da infelicidade''

segunda-feira, 23 de novembro de 2020


 



POEMA 228

Enquanto, ao competir com teu cabelo,
ouro polido ao sol deslumbra em vão;
enquanto com desprezo ao rés-do-chão
olha tua alva frente o lírio belo;


enquanto atrás do lábio, por querê-lo,
mais olhos que do cravo agora vão;
e enquanto triunfa com afetação
do luzente cristal teu ser de gelo;


goza gelo, cabelo, lábio e frente,
antes que tua hora tão dourada,
- ouro, lírio, lilás, cristal luzente -


não só em prata ou flor estiolada
se torne, mas tu e isso juntamente
em terra, em fumo, em pó, em sombra, em nada.


Luís de Góngora

 

AMOR CONSTANTE MÁS ALLÁ DE LA MUERTE

Cerrar podrá mis ojos la postrera
sombra que me llevare el blanco día,
y podrá desatar esta alma mía
hora a su afán ansioso lisonjera;

mas no, de esotra parte, en la ribera,
dejará la memoria, en donde ardía:
nadar sabe mi llama la agua fría,
y perder el respeto a ley severa.

Alma a quien todo un dios prisión ha sido,
venas que humor a tanto fuego han dado,
medulas que han gloriosamente ardido:

su cuerpo dejará no su cuidado;
serán ceniza, mas tendrá sentido;
polvo serán, mas polvo enamorado.

AMOR CONSTANTE ALÉM DA MORTE

Cerrar irá meus olhos a derradeira
sombra que me levará o branco dia,
e desatará minh’alma na umbria
agora a seu afã ansioso lisonjeira;

mas não, dessoutra parte, na ribeira,
deixará a memória, aonde ardia:
nadar sabe minha chama a água fria,
e perder o respeito a lei severa.

Alma a quem todo um deus prisão há sido,
veias que humor a tanto fogo hão dado,
medulas que hão gloriosamente ardido:

seu corpo deixará, não seu cuidado;
serão só cinza, mas terá sentido;
pó se tornarão, mas pó enamorado.

cultismo




 

Dalmácia

Mar Adriático

«As palavras dos poetas são um perigo para os ouvidos de homens que querem ser livres. Só o que fazem é criar fantasmas, que afastam os homens da contemplação da verdade.»

Obra Poética de Ruy Belo. Volume 3. Organização e Notas de Joaquim Manuel Magalhães e Maria Jorge Vilar de Figueiredo. Editorial Presença. , p. 81

 «E, no entanto, o próprio Hölderlin reconhece que, apesar da sua inocência, a palavra é o mais perigoso dos bens. O homem tem de a utilizar para testemunhar o que é. Ao lançar mão dela, expõe o seu ser, isto é, põe-no a descoberto e arrisca-o, nos dois sentidos que esse verbo tem.»

Obra Poética de Ruy Belo. Volume 3. Organização e Notas de Joaquim Manuel Magalhães e Maria Jorge Vilar de Figueiredo. Editorial Presença. , p. 81

Poetar

«desfraldar as palavras»

Obra Poética de Ruy Belo. Volume 3. Organização e Notas de Joaquim Manuel Magalhães e Maria Jorge Vilar de Figueiredo. Editorial Presença. , p. 80

domingo, 1 de novembro de 2020

«roubar as vigas e os pilares, substituindo-os por traves carcomidas». É a preparação ideológica, é a preparação da opinião pública que antecede a projectada capitulação.

Mao Tsetung. Sobre a prática. Sobre a contradição e outros textos. Textos Políticos. 1ª Edição, 1974. Editorial Minerva., p. 161

«teoria de uma só resolução»

Mao Tsetung. Sobre a prática. Sobre a contradição e outros textos. Textos Políticos. 1ª Edição, 1974. Editorial Minerva., p. 160

Disse-te Adeus e Morri

Disse-te adeus e morri

 Disse-te adeus e morri

E o cais vazio de ti
Aceitou novas marés.
Gritos de búzios perdidos
Roubaram dos meus sentidos
A gaivota que tu és.
Gaivota de asas paradas
Que não sente as madrugadas
E acorda à noite a chorar.
Gaivota que faz o ninho
Porque perdeu o caminho
Onde aprendeu a sonhar.
Preso no ventre do mar
O meu triste respirar
Sofre a invenção das horas,
Pois na ausência que deixaste,
Meu amor, como ficaste,
Meu amor, como demoras.
Compositores: Jose Antonio Sabrosa / Viasco De Lima Couto

''as crises económicas e políticas do capitalismo''

 «não é a consciência dos homens que determina o seu ser, mas sim o seu ser social que determina a sua consciência.»

Marx


Robert and Shana Parkeharrison
In the orchard

 

« A atitude científica é «buscar a verdade nos factos»; «crer-se sempre certo» e «pretender-se mestre dos demais» é uma atitude arrogante que jamais permite resolver qualquer problema.»

Mao Tsetung. Sobre a prática. Sobre a contradição e outros textos. Textos Políticos. 1ª Edição, 1974. Editorial Minerva., p. 128

«(...), tentar por todos os meios comprar os intelectuais chineses e paralisar-lhes o espírito,»

 Mao Tsetung. Sobre a prática. Sobre a contradição e outros textos. Textos Políticos. 1ª Edição, 1974. Editorial Minerva., p. 122

campesinato


RECRUTAR EM GRANDE NÚMERO OS INTELECTUAIS *

 «Há três anos que o nosso Partido e o nosso exército vêm fazendo esforços consideráveis para recrutar intelectuais; um grande número de intelectuais revolucionários foi já incorporado no Partido e no exército, no trabalho dos órgãos do poder, no movimento cultural e no movimento de massas, o que ampliou a Frente Única. Isso constitui um êxito notável.»

* Decisão do Comité Central do Partido Comunista da Chiva, redigida pelo camarada Mao Tsetung, 1 de Dezembro de 1939.

Mao Tsetung. Sobre a prática. Sobre a contradição e outros textos. Textos Políticos. 1ª Edição, 1974. Editorial Minerva., p. 120


Dream Fall

 

sábado, 31 de outubro de 2020

 


Fiama Hasse Pais Brandão.
Às vezes as coisas dentro de nós.


 Os Portugueses Vivem em Permanente Representação

Os Portugueses vivem em permanente representação, tão obsessivo é neles o sentimento de fragilidade íntima inconsciente e a correspondente vontade de a compensar com o desejo de fazer boa figura, a título pessoal ou colectivo. A reserva e a modéstia que parecem constituir a nossa segunda natureza escondem na maioria de nós uma vontade de exibição que toca as raias da paranóia, exibição trágica, não aquela desinibida, que é característica de sociedades em que o abismo entre o que se é e o que se deve parecer não atinge o grau patológico que existe entre nós.

Os Portugueses não convivem entre si, como uma lenda tenaz o proclama, espiam-se, controlam-se uns aos outros; não dialogam, disputam-se, e a convivência é uma osmose do mesmo ao mesmo, sem enriquecimento mútuo, que nunca um português confessará que aprendeu alguma coisa de um outro, a menos que seja pai ou mãe...

Costuma dizer-se que Portugal é um país tradicionalista. Nada mais falso. A continuidade opera-se ou salvaguarda-se pela inércia ou instinto de conservação social, entre nós como em toda a parte, mas a tradição não é essa continuidade, é a assumpção inovadora do adquirido, o diálogo ou combate no interior dos seus muros, sobretudo uma filiação interior criadora, fenómeno entre todos raro e insólito na cultura portuguesa. É a inserção do alígeno ou alógeno no processo da produção nacional que constitui a norma e institui o seu autor no papel de criador que nós entendemos sempre como invenção do mundo a partir de nada. Do nada que nos anteceda.
De onde procede tão calamitoso comportamento que não é apenas intelectual mas ético? Sem dúvida do divórcio profundo entre a minoria «cultivada», que vive em estado de guerrilha perpétua e só pode exceder a sua vontade de poderio com o recurso dessa efracção em fractura da produção portuguesa sem distância para se poder impor como «interessante», e a massa anónima do povo português que não participa nesse debate.

Depois do 25 de Abril, a possibilidade de participação dessas duas metades desiguais adquiriu um grau maior de verosimilhança, mas sob formas equívocas na sua grande maioria. Não é o povo que partilha agora melhor e com outro fervor da nova produção cultural, mas a franja escolarizada dele que já existia no antigo regime. De novo, aparece uma atenção de outro tipo que visa o povo, que conta inclusive com a sua hipotética colaboração, mas que durante muito tempo só poderá ser participação passiva, e não autodescoberta, quer dizer, autognose. A classe intelectual e o público em geral acedem a um grau superior de autoconsciência, com a descoberta de um Portugal oculto, por excesso de potência até, como excelentes filmes e algumas tentativas teatrais recentes o têm revelado (pensamos no famoso Trás-os-Montes e no teatro de Demarcy — Teresa Mota, Cornucopia, Grupo de Campolide, etc.) mas é necessário não ter ilusões excessivas quanto ao carácter dessa autognose.

Ela não é ainda radicalmente diferente do que representou no século xix o romance de Camilo, de Júlio Dinis ou Eça de Queirós. Destes três exemplos, acaso e contrariamente a uma tradição estabelecida, o mais realista (quer dizer aquele que possui o maior grau de autognose vivida) é o de Júlio Dinis... O Portugal do século xix parece-se mais (por dentro e até por fora) com o de Júlio Dinis do que com o de Eça. Mas só se parecerá consigo mesmo quando o olhar com que se fixará for como é, por exemplo, o caso da literatura e sobretudo do cinema norte-americano — e na Europa, do italiano —, o olhar mesmo do português, ou dos portugueses com a consciência adequada da vida do país em que realmente vivem e morrem — um olhar sujeito, quer dizer, o fim de um Portugal-objecto como é hoje para todos nós, que nos ocupamos da «cultura», a realidade portuguesa.

Eduardo Lourenço, in 'Labirinto da Saudade - Repensar Portugal (1978)'

Sam Gopal - Its Only Love ( Motorhead)


 

A boca do corpo

segunda-feira, 26 de outubro de 2020

domingo, 25 de outubro de 2020

quinta-feira, 22 de outubro de 2020

segunda-feira, 19 de outubro de 2020


 

 A dor é uma coisa estranha.

Um gato que mata um pássaro,
um acidente de automóvel,
um incêndio…
A dor chega,
BANG,
e eis que ela te atinge.

É real.

E aos olhos de qualquer pessoa pareces um estúpido.
Como se te tornasses, de repente, num idiota.

E não há cura para isso,
a menos que encontres alguém que compreenda realmente o que sentes
e te saiba ajudar…”


Charles Bukowski

domingo, 11 de outubro de 2020

anti-feudais

''Eu era o cão de guarda do presidente Mao. Eu mordia qualquer um que ele mandasse morder.''

 Jiang Qing



 

Mao Tsé-Tung

Members of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army pay their respects to the body of Mao Zedong in China.

premunir

 ''Governo de vende-pátrias''

''Governo conluiado''

Mao Tsetung. Sobre a prática. Sobre a contradição e outros textos. Textos Políticos. 1ª Edição, 1974. Editorial Minerva., p. 106

 «O liberalismo é a passividade. Objectivamente, serve o inimigo. É por essa razão que o inimigo se regozija quando o conservamos nas nossas fileiras.»

Mao Tsetung. Sobre a prática. Sobre a contradição e outros textos. Textos Políticos. 1ª Edição, 1974. Editorial Minerva., p. 102

dogmas abstractos

dissensão

The Beatles - Revolution


 

 «Julgamos ter prestado grandes serviços à revolução e damo-nos ares de veteranos; somos incapazes de fazer grandes coisas mas desdenhamos as tarefas pequenas; relaxamo-nos no trabalho e no estudo. Eis uma décima forma de liberalismo.
Cometemos erros, damo-nos conta deles mas não queremos corrigi-los, dando assim uma prova de liberalismo com relação a nós próprios. Eis a décima primeira forma de liberalismo.»

Mao Tsetung. Sobre a prática. Sobre a contradição e outros textos. Textos Políticos. 1ª Edição, 1974. Editorial Minerva., p. 101

 « (...) vegetamos «enquanto for sacristão, contentar-me-ei com tocar os sinos».

Mao Tsetung. Sobre a prática. Sobre a contradição e outros textos. Textos Políticos. 1ª Edição, 1974. Editorial Minerva., p. 101

fi.lis.teu

''ferocidade inaudita''

Mao Tsetung. Sobre a prática. Sobre a contradição e outros textos. Textos Políticos. 1ª Edição, 1974. Editorial Minerva., p. 94


 

«o absoluto existe no relativo»

 Lénine

''sem luta não há identidade''

Mao Tsetung. Sobre a prática. Sobre a contradição e outros textos. Textos Políticos. 1ª Edição, 1974. Editorial Minerva., p. 90

Jesus, no Sermão da Montanha afirmou: «Quem dentre vós, querendo construir uma torre, não se senta primeiro para calcular a despesa e ver se tem com que a concluir? Não suceda que, depois de assentar os alicerces, não a podendo acabar, todos os que virem comecem a troçar dele, dizendo: ‘Este homem começou a construir e não pôde acabar.’» (Lc 14, 28-30).

''Para fazer análise moral neste estranho campo é preciso, antes de mais, assegurar que ética é sempre e só humana. Animais e máquinas estão abaixo dela, como Deus, anjos e demónios estão acima.''

João César das Neves
Professor da Católica Lisbon School of Business & Economics

Louise Glück : poems

 


The Drowned Children


You see, they have no judgment.
So it is natural that they should drown,
first the ice taking them in
and then, all winter, their wool scarves
floating behind them as they sink
until at last they are quiet.
And the pond lifts them in its manifold dark arms.

But death must come to them differently,
so close to the beginning.
As though they had always been
blind and weightless. Therefore
the rest is dreamed, the lamp,
the good white cloth that covered the table,
their bodies.

And yet they hear the names they used
like lures slipping over the pond:
What are you waiting for
come home, come home, lost
in the waters, blue and permanent.




Mock Orange

It is not the moon, I tell you.
It is these flowers
lighting the yard.

I hate them.
I hate them as I hate sex,
the man’s mouth
sealing my mouth, the man’s
paralyzing body—

and the cry that always escapes,
the low, humiliating
premise of union—

In my mind tonight
I hear the question and pursuing answer
fused in one sound
that mounts and mounts and then
is split into the old selves,
the tired antagonisms. Do you see?
We were made fools of.
And the scent of mock orange
drifts through the window.

How can I rest?
How can I be content
when there is still
that odor in the world?




The Pond


Night covers the pond with its wing.
Under the ringed moon I can make out
your face swimming among minnows and the small
echoing stars. In the night air
the surface of the pond is metal.

Within, your eyes are open. They contain
a memory I recognize, as though
we had been children together. Our ponies
grazed on the hill, they were gray
with white markings. Now they graze
with the dead who wait
like children under their granite breastplates,
lucid and helpless:

The hills are far away. They rise up
blacker than childhood.
What do you think of, lying so quietly
by the water? When you look that way I want
to touch you, but do not, seeing
as in another life we were of the same blood.




The Fear of Burial


In the empty field, in the morning,
the body waits to be claimed.
The spirit sits beside it, on a small rock--
nothing comes to give it form again.

Think of the body's loneliness.
At night pacing the sheared field,
its shadow buckled tightly around.
Such a long journey.

And already the remote, trembling lights of the village
not pausing for it as they scan the rows.
How far away they seem,
the wooden doors, the bread and milk
laid like weights on the table.



Lamentations


1. The Logos

They were both still,
the woman mournful, the man
branching into her body.

But God was watching.
They felt his gold eye
projecting flowers on the landscape.

Who knew what He wanted?
He was God, and a monster.
So they waited. And the world
filled with His radiance,
as though He wanted to be understood.

Far away, in the void that He had shaped,
he turned to his angels.

2. Nocturne

A forest rose from the earth.
O pitiful, so needing
God’s furious love—

Together they were beasts.
They lay in the fixed
dusk of His negligence;
from the hills, wolves came, mechanically
drawn to their human warmth,
their panic.

Then the angels saw
how He divided them:
the man, the woman, and the woman’s body.

Above the churned reeds, the leaves let go
a slow moan of silver.

3. The Covenant

Out of fear, they built a dwelling place.
But a child grew between them
as they slept, as they tried
to feed themselves.

They set it on a pile of leaves,
the small discarded body
wrapped in the clean skin
of an animal. Against the black sky
they saw the massive argument of light.

Sometimes it woke. As it reached its hands
they understood they were the mother and father,
there was no authority above them.

4. The Clearing

Gradually, over many years,
the fur disappeared from their bodies
until they stood in the bright light
strange to one another.
Nothing was as before.
Their hands trembled, seeking
the familiar.

Nor could they keep their eyes
from the white flesh
on which wounds would show clearly
like words on a page.

And from the meaningless browns and greens
at last God arose, His great shadow
darkening the sleeping bodies of His children,
and leapt into heaven.

How beautiful it must have been,
the earth, that first time
seen from the air.







Siren

I became a criminal when I fell in love.
Before that I was a waitress.

I didn't want to go to Chicago with you.
I wanted to marry you, I wanted
Your wife to suffer.

I wanted her life to be like a play
In which all the parts are sad parts.

Does a good person
Think this way? I deserve

Credit for my courage--

I sat in the dark on your front porch.
Everything was clear to me:
If your wife wouldn't let you go
That proved she didn't love you.
If she loved you
Wouldn't she want you to be happy?

I think now
If I felt less I would be
A better person. I was
A good waitress.
I could carry eight drinks.

I used to tell you my dreams.
Last night I saw a woman sitting in a dark bus--
In the dream, she's weeping, the bus she's on
Is moving away. With one hand
She's waving; the other strokes
An egg carton full of babies.

The dream doesn't rescue the maiden.





Celestial Music


I have a friend who still believes in heaven.
Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to God.
She thinks someone listens in heaven.
On earth she's unusually competent.
Brave too, able to face unpleasantness.

We found a caterpillar dying in the dirt, greedy ants crawling over it.
I'm always moved by disaster, always eager to oppose vitality
But timid also, quick to shut my eyes.
Whereas my friend was able to watch, to let events play out
According to nature. For my sake she intervened
Brushing a few ants off the torn thing, and set it down
Across the road.

My friend says I shut my eyes to God, that nothing else explains
My aversion to reality. She says I'm like the child who
Buries her head in the pillow
So as not to see, the child who tells herself
That light causes sadness-
My friend is like the mother. Patient, urging me
To wake up an adult like herself, a courageous person-

In my dreams, my friend reproaches me. We're walking
On the same road, except it's winter now;
She's telling me that when you love the world you hear celestial music:
Look up, she says. When I look up, nothing.
Only clouds, snow, a white business in the trees
Like brides leaping to a great height-
Then I'm afraid for her; I see her
Caught in a net deliberately cast over the earth-

In reality, we sit by the side of the road, watching the sun set;
From time to time, the silence pierced by a birdcall.
It's this moment we're trying to explain, the fact
That we're at ease with death, with solitude.
My friend draws a circle in the dirt; inside, the caterpillar doesn't move.
She's always trying to make something whole, something beautiful, an image
Capable of life apart from her.
We're very quiet. It's peaceful sitting here, not speaking, The composition
Fixed, the road turning suddenly dark, the air
Going cool, here and there the rocks shining and glittering-
It's this stillness we both love.
The love of form is a love of endings.





End of Winter


Over the still world, a bird calls
waking solitary among black boughs.

You wanted to be born; I let you be born.
When has my grief ever gotten
in the way of your pleasure?

Plunging ahead
into the dark and light at the same time
eager for sensation

as though you were some new thing, wanting
to express yourselves

all brilliance, all vivacity

never thinking
this would cost you anything,
never imagining the sound of my voice
as anything but part of you—

you won't hear it in the other world,
not clearly again,
not in birdcall or human cry,

not the clear sound, only
persistent echoing
in all sound that means good-bye, good-bye—

the one continuous line
that binds us to each other.




Vespers [In your extended absence, you permit me]


In your extended absence, you permit me
use of earth, anticipating
some return on investment. I must report
failure in my assignment, principally
regarding the tomato plants.
I think I should not be encouraged to grow
tomatoes. Or, if I am, you should withhold
the heavy rains, the cold nights that come
so often here, while other regions get
twelve weeks of summer. All this
belongs to you: on the other hand,
I planted the seeds, I watched the first shoots
like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart
broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly
multiplying in the rows. I doubt
you have a heart, in our understanding of
that term. You who do not discriminate
between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence,
immune to foreshadowing, you may not know
how much terror we bear, the spotted leaf,
the red leaves of the maple falling
even in August, in early darkness: I am responsible
for these vines.





The Wild Iris


At the end of my suffering
there was a door.

Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing.  The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.

It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.

Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little.  And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.

You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:

from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure sea water.


Anniversary


I said you could snuggle. That doesn’t mean
your cold feet all over my dick.

Someone should teach you how to act in bed.
What I think is you should
keep your extremities to yourself.

Look what you did—
you made the cat move.

            But I didn’t want your hand there.
            I wanted your hand here.

            You should pay attention to my feet.
            You should picture them
            the next time you see a hot fifteen year old.
            Because there’s a lot more where those feet come from.





Parable of the Swans



On a small lake off
the map of the world, two
swans lived. As swans,
they spent eighty percent of the day studying
themselves in the attentive water and
twenty percent ministering to the beloved
other. Thus
their fame as lovers stems
chiefly from narcissism, which leaves
so little leisure for
more general cruising. But
fate had other plans: after ten years, they hit
slimy water; whatever the filth was, it
clung to the male’s plumage, which turned
instantly gray; simultaneously,
the true purpose of his neck’s
flexible design revealed itself. So much
action on the flat lake, so much
he’s missed! Sooner or later in a long
life together, every couple encounters
some emergency like this, some
drama which results
in harm. This
occurs for a reason: to test
love and to demand
fresh articulation of its complex terms.
So it came to light that the male and female
flew under different banners: whereas
the male believed that love
was what one felt in one’s heart
the female believed
love was what one did. But this is not
a little story about the male’s
inherent corruption, using as evidence the swan’s
sleazy definition of purity. It is
a story of guile and innocence. For ten years
the female studied the male; she dallied
when he slept or when he was
conveniently absorbed in the water,
while the spontaneous male
acted casually, on
the whim of the moment. On the muddy water
they bickered awhile, in the fading light,
until the bickering grew
slowly abstract, becoming
part of their song
after a little longer.






Vita Nova



You saved me, you should remember me.

The spring of the year; young men buying tickets for the ferryboats.
Laughter, because the air is full of apple blossoms.

When I woke up, I realized I was capable of the same feeling.

I remember sounds like that from my childhood,  
laughter for no cause, simply because the world is beautiful,
something like that.

Lugano. Tables under the apple trees.
Deckhands raising and lowering the colored flags.
And by the lake’s edge, a young man throws his hat into the water;
perhaps his sweetheart has accepted him.

Crucial
sounds or gestures like
a track laid down before the larger themes

and then unused, buried.

Islands in the distance. My mother  
holding out a plate of little cakes—

as far as I remember, changed
in no detail, the moment
vivid, intact, having never been
exposed to light, so that I woke elated, at my age  
hungry for life, utterly confident—

By the tables, patches of new grass, the pale green  
pieced into the dark existing ground.

Surely spring has been returned to me, this time  
not as a lover but a messenger of death, yet  
it is still spring, it is still meant tenderly.





The Empty Glass


I asked for much; I received much.
I asked for much; I received little, I received
next to nothing.

And between? A few umbrellas opened indoors.
A pair of shoes by mistake on the kitchen table.

O wrong, wrong—it was my nature. I was
hard-hearted, remote. I was
selfish, rigid to the point of tyranny.

But I was always that person, even in early childhood.
Small, dark-haired, dreaded by the other children.
I never changed. Inside the glass, the abstract
tide of fortune turned
from high to low overnight.

Was it the sea? Responding, maybe,
to celestial force? To be safe,
I prayed. I tried to be a better person.
Soon it seemed to me that what began as terror
and matured into moral narcissism
might have become in fact
actual human growth. Maybe
this is what my friends meant, taking my hand,
telling me they understood
the abuse, the incredible shit I accepted,
implying (so I once thought) I was a little sick
to give so much for so little.
Whereas they meant I was good (clasping my hand intensely)—
a good friend and person, not a creature of pathos.

I was not pathetic! I was writ large,
like a queen or a saint.

Well, it all makes for interesting conjecture.
And it occurs to me that what is crucial is to believe
in effort, to believe some good will come of simply trying,
a good completely untainted by the corrupt initiating impulse
to persuade or seduce—

What are we without this?
Whirling in the dark universe,
alone, afraid, unable to influence fate—

What do we have really?
Sad tricks with ladders and shoes,
tricks with salt, impurely motivated recurring
attempts to build character.
What do we have to appease the great forces?

And I think in the end this was the question
that destroyed Agamemnon, there on the beach,
the Greek ships at the ready, the sea
invisible beyond the serene harbor, the future
lethal, unstable: he was a fool, thinking
it could be controlled. He should have said
I have nothing, I am at your mercy.






Mother and Child


We’re all dreamers; we don’t know who we are.

Some machine made us; machine of the world, the constricting family.
Then back to the world, polished by soft whips.

We dream; we don’t remember.

Machine of the family: dark fur, forests of the mother’s body.
Machine of the mother: white city inside her.

And before that: earth and water.
Moss between rocks, pieces of leaves and grass.

And before, cells in a great darkness.
And before that, the veiled world.

This is why you were born: to silence me.
Cells of my mother and father, it is your turn
to be pivotal, to be the masterpiece.

I improvised; I never remembered.
Now it’s your turn to be driven;
you’re the one who demands to know:

Why do I suffer? Why am I ignorant?
Cells in a great darkness. Some machine made us;
it is your turn to address it, to go back asking
what am I for? What am I for?





A Village Life



The death and uncertainty that await me
as they await all men, the shadows evaluating me
because it can take time to destroy a human being,
the element of suspense
needs to be preserved—

On Sundays I walk my neighbor’s dog
so she can go to church to pray for her sick mother.

The dog waits for me in the doorway. Summer and winter
we walk the same road, early morning, at the base of the escarpment.
Sometimes the dog gets away from me—for a moment or two,
I can’t see him behind some trees. He’s very proud of this,
this trick he brings out occasionally, and gives up again
as a favor to me—

Afterward, I go back to my house to gather firewood.

I keep in my mind images from each walk:
monarda growing by the roadside;
in early spring, the dog chasing the little gray mice

so for a while it seems possible
not to think of the hold of the body weakening, the ratio
of the body to the void shifting,

and the prayers becoming prayers for the dead.

Midday, the church bells finished. Light in excess:
still, fog blankets the meadow, so you can’t see
the mountain in the distance, covered with snow and ice.

When it appears again, my neighbor thinks
her prayers are answered. So much light she can’t control her happiness—
it has to burst out in language. Hello, she yells, as though
that is her best translation.

She believes in the Virgin the way I believe in the mountain,
though in one case the fog never lifts.
But each person stores his hope in a different place.

I make my soup, I pour my glass of wine.
I’m tense, like a child approaching adolescence.
Soon it will be decided for certain what you are,
one thing, a boy or girl. Not both any longer.
And the child thinks: I want to have a say in what happens.
But the child has no say whatsoever.

When I was a child, I did not foresee this.

Later, the sun sets, the shadows gather,
rustling the low bushes like animals just awake for the night.
Inside, there’s only firelight. It fades slowly;
now only the heaviest wood’s still
flickering across the shelves of instruments.
I hear music coming from them sometimes,
even locked in their cases.

When I was a bird, I believed I would be a man.
That’s the flute. And the horn answers,
When I was a man, I cried out to be a bird.
Then the music vanishes. And the secret it confides in me
vanishes also.

In the window, the moon is hanging over the earth,
meaningless but full of messages.

It’s dead, it’s always been dead,
but it pretends to be something else,
burning like a star, and convincingly, so that you feel sometimes
it could actually make something grow on earth.

If there’s an image of the soul, I think that’s what it is.

I move through the dark as though it were natural to me,
as though I were already a factor in it.
Tranquil and still, the day dawns.
On market day, I go to the market with my lettuces.








A Sharply Worded Silence



Let me tell you something, said the old woman.
We were sitting, facing each other,
in the park at ___, a city famous for its wooden toys.

At the time, I had run away from a sad love affair,
and as a kind of penance or self punishment, I was working
at a factory, carving by hand the tiny hands and feet.

The park was my consolation, particularly in the quiet hours
after sunset, when it was often abandoned,
But on this evening, when I entered what was called the Contessa’s Garden,
I saw that someone had preceded me. It strikes me now
I could have gone ahead, but I had been
set on this destination; all day I had been thinking of the cherry trees
with which the glade was planted, whose time of blossoming had nearly ended.

We sat in silence. Dusk was falling,
and with it came a feeling of enclosure
as in a train cabin.

When I was young, she said, I liked walking the garden path at twilight
and if the path was long enough I would see the moon rise.
That was for me the great pleasure: not sex, not food, not worldly amusement.
I preferred the moon’s rising, and sometimes I would hear,
at the same moment, the sublime notes of the final ensemble
of The Marriage of Figaro. Where did the music come from?
I never knew.

Because it is the nature of garden paths
to be circular, each night, after my wanderings,
I would find myself at my front door, staring at it,
barely able to make out, in darkness, the glittering knob.

It was, she said, a great discovery, albeit my real life.

But certain nights, she said, the moon was barely visible through the clouds
and the music never started. A night of pure discouragement.
And still the next night I would begin again, and often all would be well.

I could think of nothing to say. This story, so pointless as I write it out,
was in fact interrupted at every stage with trance-like pauses
and prolonged intermissions, so that by this time night had started.

Ah the capacious night, the night
so eager to accommodate strange perceptions. I felt that some important secret
was about to be entrusted to me, as a torch is passed
from one hand to another in a relay.

My sincere apologies, she said.
I had mistaken you for one of my friends.
And she gestured toward the statues we sat among,
heroic men, self-sacrificing saintly women
holding granite babies to their breasts.
Not changeable, she said, like human beings.

I gave up on them, she said.
But I never lost my taste for circular voyages.
Correct me if I’m wrong.

Above our heads, the cherry blossoms had begun
to loosen in the night sky, or maybe the stars were drifting,
drifting and falling apart, and where they landed
new worlds would form.

Soon afterward I returned to my native city
and was reunited with my former lover.
And yet increasingly my mind returned to this incident,
studying it from all perspectives, each year more intensely convinced,
despite the absence of evidence, that it contained some secret.
I concluded finally that whatever message there might have been
was not contained in speech—so, I realized, my mother used to speak to me,
her sharply worded silences cautioning me and chastizing me—

and it seemed to me I had not only returned to my lover
but was now returning to the Contessa’s Garden
in which the cherry trees were still blooming
like a pilgrim seeking expiation and forgiveness,

so I assumed there would be, at some point,
a door with a glittering knob,
but when this would happen and where I had no idea.





 Louise Glück :

  Louise Glück, a former Poet Laureate of the United States, is the author of over a dozen books of poetry including Faithful and Virtuous Night (winner of the National Book Award for Poetry) and her recent anthology, Poems: 1962-2012. Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Hass has called her “one of the purest and most accomplished lyric poets now writing.”
Glück taught at Williams College for 20 years and is currently Rosenkranz writer-in-residence at Yale University. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 1999 was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Her numerous books of poetry include A Village Life (2009), The Seven Ages (2001), and The Wild Iris (1992), for which she received the Pulitzer Prize. Louise Glück says of writing, “[It] is not decanting of personality. The truth, on the page, need not have been lived. It is, instead, all that can be envisioned.”

Louise Glück with Peter Streckfus, Conversation.  Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on May 11, 2016. This was a Lannan Literary event.

Louise Glück,  is introduced by Peter Streckfus and then read from her work.

Lannan Literary event.




Stand-Up Vampire. By  Gillian White. London Review of Books ,  September 26, 2013. 


Acquainted With the Dark. By  Peter Campion. New York Times , September  26, 2014

Powered By Blogger