Última hora

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

Orpheus Descending # 4

Death don't come when you want it, it comes when you don't want it! I wanted death, then, but I took the next best thing. You sold yourself. I sold my self. You was bought. I was bought. You made whores of us both.

Tennessee Williams

Orpheus Descending # 3

LADY:
Your brother's coming, go out! He can't come in!
[CAROL picks up coat and goes into confectionery, sobbing. VAL crosses toward door.]
Lock that door! Don't let him come in my store!
[CAROL sinks sobbing at table. LADY runs up to the landing of the stairs as DAVID CUTRERE enters the store. He is a tall man in hunter's clothes. He is hardly less handsome now than he was in his youth but something has gone: his power is that of a captive who rules over other captives. His face, his eyes, have something of the same desperate, unnatural hardness that LADY meets the world with.]

Tennessee Williams

Orpheus Descending # 2

VAL:
Listen! - When I was a kid on Witches' Bayou? After my folks all scattered away like loose chicken's feathers blown around by the wind? - I stayed there alone on the bayou, hunted and trapped out of season and hid from the law! - Listen! - All that time, all that lonely time, I felt I was - waiting for something!

LADY:
What for?

VAL:
What does anyone wait for? For something to happen, for anything to happen, to make things make more sense. ... It's hard to remember what that feeling was like because I've lost it now, but I was waiting for something like if you ask a question you wait for someone to answer, but you ask the wrong question or you ask the wrong person and the answer don't come.
Does everything stop because you don't get the answer? No, it goes right on as if the answer was given, day comes after day and night comes after night, and you're still waiting for someone to answer the question and going right on as the question was answered. And then - well - then. ...

LADY:
Then what?

VAL:
You get the make-believe answer.

LADY:
What answer is that?

VAL:
Don't pretend you don't know because you do!

LADY:
- Love?

Tennessee Williams

Orpheus Descending # 1

People can live together in hate for a long time. Notice their passion for money. I've always noticed when couples don't love each other they develop a passion for money.

Tennessee Williams