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A Zazie tinha o "Mornings on Bourbon Street" e salvou-me gentilmente a vida ao postá-lo no Cocanha.

Obrigada, Zazie!

E agora, o poema.

«Mornings on Bourbon Street


He knew he would say it. But could he believe it again?

He thought of the innocent mornings on Bourbon Street,
of the sunny courtyard and the iron
lion’s head on the door.

He thought of the quality light could not be expected
to have again after rain,

the pigeons and drunkards coming together from under
the same stone arches, to move again in the sun’s
faint mumble of benediction with faint surprise.

He thought of the tall iron horseman before the Cabildo,
tipping his hat so gallantly towards old wharves,
the mist of the river beginning to climb about him.

He thought of the rotten-sweet odor of Old Quarter had,
so much like a warning of what he would have to learn.

He thought of belief and the gradual loss of belief
and the piercing together of something like it again.

But, oh, how his blood had almost turned in color
when once, in response to a sudden call from a window,
he stopped on a curbstone and first thought,

Love, Love, Love.

He knew he would say it. But could he believe it again?

He thought of Irene whose body was offered at night
behind the cathedral, whose outspoken pictures were hung
outdoors, in the public square,
as brutal as knuckles smashed into grinning faces.

He thought of merchant sailor who wrote of the sea,
haltingly, with a huge power locked in a halting tongue–

Lost in a tanker off the Florida coast,
the locked and virginal power burned in oil.

He thought of the opulent antique dealers on Royal
whose tables of rosewood gleamed as blood under lamps.

He thought of his friends.

He thought of his lost companions,
of all he had touched and all whose touch he had known.

He wept for remembrance.

But when he had finished weeping, he washed his face,

he smiled at his face in the mirror, preparing to say
to you, whom he was expecting.

Love. Love. Love

But could he believe it again?»

Tennessee Williams

my sweet old etcetera - e. e. cummings

my sweet old etcetera
aunt lucy during the recent

war could and what
is more did tell you just
what everybody was fighting

for,
my sister

isabel created hundreds
(and
hundreds) of socks not to
mention shirts fleaproof earwarmers

etcetera wristers etcetera, my

mother hoped that

i would die etcetera
bravely of course my father used
to become hoarse talking about how it was
a privilege and if only he
could meanwhile my

self etcetera lay quietly
in the deep mud et

cetera
(dreaming,
et
cetera, of
Your smile
eyes knees and of your Etcetera)

Sheep

Thousands of sheep, soft-footed, black-nosed sheep—one by one going up the hill and over the fence—one by one four-footed pattering up and over—one by one wiggling their stub tails as they take the short jump and go over—one by one silently unless for the multitudinous drumming of their hoofs as they move on and go over—thousands and thousands of them in the grey haze of evening just after sundown—one by one slanting in a long line to pass over the hill—

I am the slow, long-legged Sleepyman and I love you sheep in Persia, California, Argentine, Australia, or Spain—you are the thoughts that help me when I, the Sleepyman, lay my hands on the eyelids of the children of the world at eight o’clock every night—you thousands and thousands of sheep in a procession of dusk making an endless multitudinous drumming on the hills with your hoofs.

Carl Sandburg > Other days > Chicago Poems

Languages

There are no handles upon a language
Whereby men take hold of it
And mark it with signs for its remembrance.
It is a river, this language,
Once in a thousand years
Breaking a new course
Changing its way to the ocean.
It is mountain effluvia
Moving to valleys
And from nation to nation
Crossing borders and mixing.
Languages die like rivers.
Words wrapped round your tongue today
And broken to shape of thought
Between your teeth and lips speaking
Now and today
Shall be faded hieroglyphics
Ten thousand years from now.
Sing—and singing—remember
Your song dies and changes
And is not here to-morrow
Any more than the wind
Blowing ten thousand years ago.

Carl Sandburg > Other days > Chicago Poems

I Am the People, the Mob

I am the people—the mob—the crowd—the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world’s food and clothes.
I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.
I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand for much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me. I forget. The best of me is sucked out and wasted. I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and makes me work and give up what I have. And I forget.
Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red drops for history to remember. Then—I forget.
When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer forget who robbed me last year, who played me for a fool—then there will be no speaker in all the world say the name: “The People,” with any fleck of a sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision.
The mob—the crowd—the mass—will arrive then.

Carl Sandburg > Other days > Chicago Poems

Under a Telephone Pole

I am a copper wire slung in the air,
Slim against the sun I make not even a clear line of shadow.
Night and day I keep singing—humming and thrumming:
It is love and war and money; it is the fighting and the tears, the work and want,
Death and laughter of men and women passing through me, carrier of your speech, 5
In the rain and the wet dripping, in the dawn and the shine drying,
A copper wire.

Carl Sandburg > Other days > Chicago Poems

Young Sea

The sea is never still.
It pounds on the shore
Restless as a young heart,
Hunting.

The sea speaks
And only the stormy hearts
Know what it says:
It is the face
of a rough mother speaking.

The sea is young.
One storm cleans all the hoar
And loosens the age of it.
I hear it laughing, reckless.

They love the sea,
Men who ride on it
And know they will die
Under the salt of it

Let only the young come,
Says the sea.

Let them kiss my face
And hear me.
I am the last word
And I tell
Where storms and stars come from.

Carl Sandburg > Fogs and Fires > Chicago Poems

At a Window

Give me hunger,
O you gods that sit and give
The world its orders.
Give me hunger, pain and want,
Shut me out with shame and failure
From your doors of gold and fame,
Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger!

But leave me a little love,
A voice to speak to me in the day end,
A hand to touch me in the dark room
Breaking the long loneliness.
In the dusk of day-shapes
Blurring the sunset,
One little wandering, western star
Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow.
Let me go to the window,
Watch there the day-shapes of dusk
And wait and know the coming
Of a little love.

Carl Sandburg > Fogs and Fires > Chicago Poems

Our Prayer of Thanks

For the gladness here where the sun is shining at evening on the weeds at the river,
Our prayer of thanks.

For the laughter of children who tumble barefooted and bareheaded in the summer grass,
Our prayer of thanks.

For the sunset and the stars, the women and the white arms that hold us,
Our prayer of thanks.

God,
If you are deaf and blind, if this is all lost to you,
God, if the dead in their coffins amid the silver handles on the edge of town, or the reckless dead of war days thrown unknown in pits, if these dead are forever deaf and blind and lost,
Our prayer of thanks.

God,
The game is all your way, the secrets and the signals and the system; and so for the break of the game and the first play and the last.
Our prayer of thanks.

Carl Sandburg > The Road and the End > Chicago Poems

Choices

They offer you many things,
I a few.
Moonlight on the play of fountains at night
With water sparkling a drowsy monotone,
Bare-shouldered, smiling women and talk
And a cross-play of loves and adulteries
And a fear of death
and a remembering of regrets:
All this they offer you.
I come with:
salt and bread
a terrible job of work
and tireless war;
Come and have now:
hunger.
danger
and hate.

Carl Sandburg > The Road and the End > Chicago Poems

The Road and the End

I shall foot it
Down the roadway in the dusk,
Where shapes of hunger wander
And the fugitives of pain go by.
I shall foot it
In the silence of the morning,
See the night slur into dawn,
Hear the slow great winds arise
Where tall trees flank the way
And shoulder toward the sky.

The broken boulders by the road
Shall not commemorate my ruin.
Regret shall be the gravel under foot.
I shall watch for
Slim birds swift of wing
That go where wind and ranks of thunder
Drive the wild processionals of rain.

The dust of the traveled road
Shall touch my hands and face.

Carl Sandburg > The Road and the End > Chicago Poems

Buttons

I have been watching the war map slammed up for advertising in front of the newspaper office.
Buttons—red and yellow buttons—blue and black buttons—are shoved back and forth across the map.

A laughing young man, sunny with freckles,
Climbs a ladder, yells a joke to somebody in the crowd,
And then fixes a yellow button one inch west
And follows the yellow button with a black button one inch west.

(Ten thousand men and boys twist on their bodies in a red soak along a river edge,
Gasping of wounds, calling for water, some rattling death in their throats.)
Who would guess what it cost to move two buttons one inch on the war map here in front of the newspaper office where the freckle-faced young man is laughing to us?

Carl Sandburg > War Poems (1914-1915) > Chicago Poems

Kin

Brother, I am fire
Surging under the ocean floor.
I shall never meet you, brother—
Not for years, anyhow;
Maybe thousands of years, brother.
Then I will warm you,
Hold you close, wrap you in circles,
Use you and change you—
Maybe thousands of years, brother.

Carl Sandburg > Handfuls > Chicago Poems (1916)

Losses

I have love
And a child,
A banjo
And shadows.
(Losses of God,
All will go
And one day
We will hold
Only the shadows.)

Carl Sandburg > Handfuls > Chicago Poems (1916)

Dunes

What do we see here in the sand dunes of the white moon alone with our thoughts, Bill,
Alone with our dreams, Bill, soft as the women tying scarves around their heads dancing,
Alone with a picture and a picture coming one after the other of all the dead,
The dead more than all these grains of sand one by one piled here in the moon,
Piled against the sky-line taking shapes like the hand of the wind wanted,
What do we see here, Bill, outside of what the wise men beat their heads on,
Outside of what the poets cry for and the soldiers drive on headlong and leave their skulls in the sun for — what, Bill?

Carl Sandburg > Chicago Poems (1916)

Mag

I wish to God I never saw you, Mag.
I wish you never quit your job and came along with me.
I wish we never bought a license and a white dress
For you to get married in the day we ran off to a minister
And told him we would love each other and take care of each other
Always and always long as the sun and the rain lasts anywhere.
Yes, I’m wishing now you lived somewhere away from here
And I was a bum on the bumpers a thousand miles away dead broke.
I wish the kids had never come
And rent and coal and clothes to pay for
And a grocery man calling for cash,
Every day cash for beans and prunes.
I wish to God I never saw you, Mag.
I wish to God the kids had never come.

Carl Sandburg > Chicago Poems (1916)

Clark Street Bridge

Dust of the feet
And dust of the wheels,
Wagons and people going,
All day feet and wheels.

Now…
..Only stars and mist
A lonely policeman,
Two cabaret dancers,
Stars and mist again,
No more feet or wheels,
No more dust and wagons.

Voices of dollars
And drops of blood
. . . . .
Voices of broken hearts,
..Voices singing, singing,
..Silver voices, singing,
Softer than the stars,
Softer than the mist.

Carl Sandburg > Chicago Poems (1916)

They Will Say

Of my city the worst that men will ever say is this:
You took little children away from the sun and the dew,
And the glimmers that played in the grass under the great sky,
And the reckless rain; you put them between walls
To work, broken and smothered, for bread and wages,
To eat dust in their throats and die empty-hearted
For a little handful of pay on a few Saturday nights.

Carl Sandburg > Chicago Poems (1916)

Ande yo caliente

Traten otros del gobierno
del mundo y sus monarquías,
mientras gobiernan mis días
mantequillas y pan tierno,
y las mañana de invierno
naranjada y aguardiente,
y ríase la gente.

Coma en dorada vajilla
el príncipe mil cuidados
como píldoras dorados,
que yo en mi pobre mesilla
quiero más una morcilla
que en el asador reviente,
y ríase la gente.

Cuando cubra las montañas
de plata y nieve el enero,
tenga yo lleno el brasero
de bellotas y castañas,
y quien las dulces patrañas
del rey que rabió me cuente,
y ríase la gente.

Busque muy en hora buena
el mercader nuevos soles;
yo conchas y caracoles
entre la menuda arena,
escuchando a Filomena
sobre el chopo de la fuente,
y ríase la gente.

Pase a media noche el mar
y arda en amorosa llama
Leandro por ver su dama;
que yo más quiero pasar
de Yepes a Madrigar
la regalada corriente,
y ríase la gente.

Pues Amor es tan cruel,
que de Píramo y su amada
hace tálamo una espada,
do se junten ella y él,
sea mi Tisbe un pastel,
y la espada sea mi diente,
y ríase la gente.

Luis de Góngora

Já não será a primeira vez, mas apetece-me muito:

«Los encuentros de un caracol aventurero

Hay dulzura infantil
en la mañana quieta.
Los árboles extienden
sus brazos a la tierra.
Un vaho tembloroso
cubre las sementeras,
y las arañas tienden
sus caminos de seda
-rayas al cristal limpio
del aire-.
En la alameda
un manantial recita
su canto entre las hierbas.
Y el caracol, pacífico
burgués de la vereda,
ignorado y humilde,
el paisaje contempla.
La divina quietud
de la Naturaleza
le dio valor y fe,
y olvidando las penas
de su hogar, deseó
ver el fin de la senda.

Echó a andar e internose
en un bosque de yedras
y de ortigas. En medio
había dos ranas viejas
que tomaban el sol,
aburridas y enfermas.

"Esos cantos modernos
-murmuraba una de ellas-
son inútiles". "Todos,
amiga -le contesta
la otra rana, que estaba
herida y casi ciega-.
Cuando joven creía
que si al fin Dios oyera
nuestro canto, tendría
compasión. Y mi ciencia,
pues ya he vivido mucho,
hace que no lo crea.
Yo ya no canto más..."

Las dos ranas se quejan
pidiendo una limosna
a una ranita nueva
que pasa presumida
apartando las hierbas.

Ante el bosque sombrío
el caracol se aterra.
Quiere gritar. No puede.
Las ranas se le acercan.

"¿Es una mariposa?",
dice la casi ciega.
"Tiene dos cuernecitos
-la otra rana contesta-.
Es el caracol. ¿Vienes,
caracol, de otras tierras?"

"Vengo de mi casa y quiero
volverme muy pronto a ella".
"Es un bicho muy cobarde
-exclama la rana ciega-.
¿No cantas nunca?" "No canto",
dice el caracol. "¿Ni rezas?"
"Tampoco: nunca aprendí".
"¿Ni crees en la vida eterna?"
"¿Qué es eso?
"Pues vivir siempre
en el agua más serena,
junto a una tierra florida
que a un rico manjar sustenta".

"Cuando niño a mí me dijo
un día mi pobre abuela
que al morirme yo me iría
sobre las hojas más tiernas
de los árboles más altos".

"Una hereje era tu abuela.
La verdad te la decimos
nosotras. Creerás en ella",
dicen las ranas furiosas.

"¿Por qué quise ver la senda?
-gime el caracol-. Sí creo
por siempre en la vida eterna
que predicáis..."
Las ranas,
muy pensativas, se alejan.
y el caracol, asustado,
se va perdiendo en la selva.

Las dos ranas mendigas
como esfinges se quedan.
Una de ellas pregunta:
"¿Crees tú en la vida eterna?"
"Yo no", dice muy triste
la rana herida y ciega.
"¿Por qué hemos dicho, entonces,
al caracol que crea?"
"Por qué... No sé por qué
-dice la rana ciega-.
Me lleno de emoción
al sentir la firmeza
con que llaman mis hijos
a Dios desde la acequia..."

El pobre caracol
vuelve atrás. Ya en la senda
un silencio ondulado
mana de la alameda.
Con un grupo de hormigas
encarnadas se encuentra.
Van muy alborotadas,
arrastrando tras ellas
a otra hormiga que tiene
tronchadas las antenas.
El caracol exclama:
"Hormiguitas, paciencia.
¿Por qué así maltratáis
a vuestra compañera?
Contadme lo que ha hecho.
Yo juzgaré en conciencia.
Cuéntalo tú, hormiguita".

La hormiga, medio muerta,
dice muy tristemente:
"Yo he visto las estrellas."
"¿Qué son las estrellas?", dicen
las hormigas inquietas.
Y el caracol pregunta
pensativo: "¿Estrellas?"
"Sí -repite la hormiga-,
he visto las estrellas,
subí al árbol más alto
que tiene la alameda
y vi miles de ojos
dentro de mis tinieblas".
El caracol pregunta:
"¿Pero qué son las estrellas?"
"Son luces que llevamos
sobre nuestra cabeza".
"Nosotras no las vemos",
las hormigas comentan.
Y el caracol: "Mi vista
sólo alcanza a las hierbas."

Las hormigas exclaman
moviendo sus antenas:
"Te mataremos; eres
perezosa y perversa.
El trabajo es tu ley."

"Yo he visto a las estrellas",
dice la hormiga herida.
Y el caracol sentencia:
"Dejadla que se vaya.
seguid vuestras faenas.
Es fácil que muy pronto
ya rendida se muera".

Por el aire dulzón
ha cruzado una abeja.
La hormiga, agonizando,
huele la tarde inmensa,
y dice: "Es la que viene
a llevarme a una estrella".

Las demás hormiguitas
huyen al verla muerta.

El caracol suspira
y aturdido se aleja
lleno de confusión
por lo eterno. "La senda
no tiene fin -exclama-.
Acaso a las estrellas
se llegue por aquí.
Pero mi gran torpeza
me impedirá llegar.
No hay que pensar en ellas".

Todo estaba brumoso
de sol débil y niebla.
Campanarios lejanos
llaman gente a la iglesia,
y el caracol, pacífico
burgués de la vereda,
aturdido e inquieto,
el paisaje contempla. »

Federico García Lorca > Libro de Poemas