Vasco Gato

Sei como os eléctricos

de noite parados

me procuram. Sei que me rege

uma flor

insensata.

A minha falência

será trespassada por um comboio

incandescente,

e então haverá o cometa,

o belo corpo que nunca

existiu.

Vasco Gato, IMO.

Ferreira Gullar

Dezembro

Fora da casa

o dia mantém solidário

seu corpo de chama e de verdura

Dia terrestre,

falam num mesmo nível de fogo

minha boca e a tua

Ferreira Gullar, Toda Poesia 1950-1980

T.S. Eliot: Little Gidding

Little Gidding 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, Four Quartets. 

Não te esqueças

De levar o melhor de cada um,

a potência plural de cada um,

o olhar mais sincero de cada um

quem te salvou,

quem olhaste nos olhos,

quem amaste profundamente

quem amas profundamente

com toda a luz do teu coração.

Não te esqueças de te sentar no lugar mais improvável,

por exemplo:

em frente de uma repartição no domingo, às três horas da tarde

na berma de uma autoestrada, no meio de um estádio vazio,

a meio do trajeto para tua casa,

de te sentares na berma,

de pôr as mãos no joelho

de respirar profundamente;

de não esperar nada de ti nem de ninguém -

de esperar tudo - absolutamente tudo – de ti e de toda a gente.

De aproximar uma folha dos olhos.

De imaginar o mar prateado

de comer a dobrada mais fria,

de fazer festas a um cão malhado:

e Arder. Arder. Arder.

Que amanhã dez mil borboletas vão chegar a Michoacan,

que para os gregos humanidade era um verbo,

que tudo é caminho e perder-se faz também parte do caminho,

que virar certas páginas é um incêndio

que este é um poema para a vida

que os animais não choram -

que os animais não riem -

que és um animal privilegiado

que afinal os animais choram e os animais riem

e que tens de esquecer tudo novamente

e aprender tudo outro vez a cada segundo que passa,

que uma pessoa é uma coisa que arde,

que madura, que ri, que se sustenta dentro de um fio,

que agora mesmo alguém cai abruptamente,

que uma estrela do mar é virtualmente eterna

e pode nunca morrer –

 que um poema pode nunca morrer -

que um poema nunca morre – que na verdade (e talvez virtualmente)

 morremos a cada segundo (com um relógio no pulso)

que agora mesmo, no centro da América, uma mãe decide não respirar,

dançar por dentro, nascer novamente,

que, devagar, um caracol sobe um muro branco numa aldeia da Sicília

que um homem começa a sua marcha,

que nada se detém quando um homem começa a sua marcha,

que um continente pulsa,

 que só podemos ver com os olhos dos outros.

Não te esqueças de perder uma chave,

de chegar atrasado a todos os compromissos,

de te sentar a meio do teu percurso,

no lugar mais inesperado, na hora mais inesperada,

De respirar fundo

De arder...

                        Não te esqueças.

Nuno Brito.

Ana Cristina Joaquim

1.

Retratação pelas unhas dos

pés,

agora em sangue no açougue NUDE

baixo guia pelo meio

formas frias

estranha CINZA

polegares carne crua,

cruel.

Silêncio exibe pontas

noite do faquir disforme

 – não dorme, dorme –

o medo aflora ROXO

aromas, suores.

Repetida vida treme e

sangra pelos poros. 

 2.

Mulher brava os seios doem

sobrancelhas grossas os seios doem, sinalizam.

O chá estragado, essa unidade da dor

a mãe confunde: noite

hoje. Noite hoje de

sovacos e testas

essa unidade sem fim o corpo – o irmão

 o corpo dói.

Incomodava a noite a memória paralela

da dor, essa unidade da dor

 – não incide – grita esse

mote: MATE

morte sem fim.

Os cabelos são brancos e

caem. 

 3.

  

a pergunta hesitação demora a resposta grande

dispersa em branco mindinho sobre a pauta

fatia fracta das vias

como estão seus seios

sua palavra mãe 

sua forma insone

onde no seu movimento

dói

em que vago traço a existência

dos cacos

fere finos espaços

veias fluxo vago

você interrompe?

  

 4.

se dedo pequeno no

pé puder projetar

se no solo feito háluxsuperpoderoso.

um pote vazio cinzeiro fósforo

medula abismal encolha dos seios interrupção

verbete inóspito

túmulo

túmulo

túmulo.

momento a mão

olha

sem desatenção, atenta a mão olha.

osso a osso rarefeita.

 5.

acaricia enxofre a mão enorme

espeta insone miúdos fumos

ninguém amacia a

via daninha

dragões ou armaduras passos nem regressos.

ramifica a escuta o cabelo

eco

o cabelo enorme acelera os passos eco.

por aqui ninguém.

 6.

(O cordão do entendimento passava

necessariamente pelo

buraco da pia que breve, nas grandes cidades,

urgentes como são, daria no esgoto

centenário)

 7.

Cadaverizar o relógio de

pulso preso pelas cordas do

tempo, sucede.

Cronológico destino azeda,

investe contra o

que lia,

relia

no livro dos cruzados dias,

ásperos ares.

Antecede a rima. O metro

da medida morna

consola apressada

vidraria.

Submete a ira.

Ainda ontem –o ponteiro –

transparente guia.

Vagaroso engano,

o ruído mede o vate

verossímil.

Joga hoje

essa mortalha

herege

grita e principia.

 8.

Sob o altar obsceno

esconde o diâmetro do

esquema corporal.

Existência chaminé,

evidência própria, concêntrica.

Adesão móbile das dimensões

biológicas, Cogito sensório,

riso histérico.

 9.

No centro do precipício há um pêndulo hipnótico,

o seu rosto a fascinar os dias, movimento irregular,

gama de dedos a multiplicar o ventre.

No contorno do abismo,

distensão das horas máximas ultrapassadas pelo instante.

Permanece ave cintilante quando gaita do futuro,

incursões pelo destino de dois:

meu fundo,

seu dorso,

minha abertura angular.

Nossos traços flores abismais, peixe finíssimo das marés, vasos invencíveis,

nosso ciclo.

Apreciação dos cheiros, seu gesto inunda os meus espaços,

a loucura abocanha a noite, essa massa espessa que demarca o tempo.

Seu tom, seu dom, meu modo medo de espasmo lúbrico.

Hidrografia semeada na permuta: você, meu outro, ouro dos dias,

face incógnita do valor das horas.

Do outro lado de nós,

chumbo receio do falecimento permanece, minha

visão irremediável do que possa haver além,

sua morte anoitece os olhos, anuncia o incolor dos tempos,

dissipa.

 10.

as flores entremeiam gestos

anunciam cores agudas e,

revelando todos os segredos, súbitas somem.

suas formas de esconder-se, o esforço de ter de buscá-lo entre palavras.

êxtase perceptivo – seu estado de indeterminâncias, suas arestas irreparáveis, seu contorno amplo, brusco: ruído, cheiro, gosto.

indício elementar e já não está mais ali, fugaz a sua tara,

a desenvoltura do mote pelo o toque, o susto, vento violento,

lisura das escamas escorregam lancinantes.

a proximidade imperiosa acentua o trecho

o olho percorrendo breve.

 a pupila. o traçado circular

o único possível

desvenda o termo de todas as coisas e

permanece

 11.

Me consignei ao estômago

quando se tratava de fome.

Ao espaço faltavam pernas corrediças,

o anúncio da contagem das horas.

O meu lume.

A noite acende os tumores sem que

se possa saber 

do corpo

o mapa

a musculatura distendida

a ordem de disposição

a mancha verde no canto da perna

medo pulmonar preenchendo cinzeiros.

Dizendo que sim, a cabeça balança ávida

coleta de sangue

400 ml.

 12.

Detestamentário de uma tabagista

Quando eu morrer, joga minhas cinzas sobre o meu corpo

 12.

Sobre suas palavras em minha boca

Para Juliana Amato, a amiga.

Calada pensou que valeria, valia.

Retirava-se daquela bagunça toda                                                     

 – coisas dela – sobre o que decidira (e sem mais).                            

Diversidade de pessoas, de berros, pareciam animais.

No retorno

naquele dia roxo

nos milhares de nós que, obrigada a desatar,

desatou.

Vitupérios: vituperava, vituperava.

Todos os anos lhe valeram uma única porrada,

porradíssima na boca do estômago

bastaria.

O amor não vale nada

O amor não presta e fede

O amor é ordinário, vagabundo

O amor é uma coisa barata e nada a ver

O amor é uma balada pop.

 13.

inseto indagativo desorganiza a

melodia e

dança, calça suas patas

reúne aves peixes

mangagás insetos

adivinha bafos

jimbo pássaro se abre

jimbo concha se abre

transe erótico das tripas,

atravessa

avessa

magia inseta magia

alada mulher

(ataques fêmeos)

figa chave lesa fresta

brecha, brecha.

Ana Cristina Joaquim; Partilhado a partir deMallarmargens: Revista de Poesia e Arte Contemporânea