Sociedade e Mundo

P. DAS HORAS — Parte II —

Grandes estandartes de fumo das chaminés das fábricas
Sobre os telhados (...)
Ó poderosamente gritos de combate!
Vago rumor silencioso e comercial das ruas...
E a ordem inconsciente dos que vão e vêm
Pelas fitas dos passeios...
À hora de sol em que as lojas descem os toldos

O teu cabelo cortado
À maneira de rapaz
Não deixa justificado
Aquele amor que me faz.

Com bandas militares à frente, compostas de volantes e hélices,
Com uma vanguarda sonora de sereia de automóvel e de barco
Com um estardalhaço longínquo, com saltos e alardes
De bombos e pratos, com (...)
Desencadeio-me a saudar-te. Pum!
Pum, pum, pum...
Pu-u-u-u-u-m!

Tens o olhar misterioso
Com um jeito nevoento,
Indeciso, duvidoso,
Minha Marta Francisca,
Meu amor, meu orçamento!

A tua face de rosa
Tem o colorido esquivo
De uma nota oficiosa.
Quem dera ter-te em meus braços,
Ó meu saldo positivo!

E o teu cabelo — não choro
Seu regresso ao natural —Abandona o padrão-ouro
Amor, pomba, estrada, porta,
Sindicato nacional!

Não sei por que me desprezas.
Fita-me mais um instante,
Lindo corte nas despesas,
Adorada abolição
Da dívida flutuante!

Com que madrigais mostrar-te
Este amor que é chama viva?
Ouve, escuta: vou chamar-te
Assembleia Nacional
Câmara Corporativa.

Como te amo, como, como,
Meu Acto Colonial!
De amor já quase não como,
Meu Estatuto de Trabalho,
Meu Banco de Portugal!

Meu crédito no estrangeiro!
Meu encaixe — ouro adorado!
Serei sempre o teu romeiro...
Pousa a cabeça em meu ombro,
Ó meu Conselho de Estado!

Ó minha corporativa,
Minha lei de Estado Novo,
Não me sejas mais esquiva!
Meu coração quer guarida
Ó linda Casa do Povo!

União Nacional querida,
Teus olhos enchem de mágoa
A sombra da minha vida
Que passa como uma esquadra
Sobre a energia da água.

Que aristocrático ri,
O teu cabelo em cifrões — Finanças em mise-en-plis! —
Meu activo plebiscito,
Nunca desceste a eleições!

Por isso nunca me escolhes
E a minha esperança é vã.
Nem sequer por dó me acolhes,
Minha imprevidente linda
Civilização cristã!

Bem sei: por estes meus modos
Nunca me podes amar.
Olha, desculpa-mas todas.
Estou seguindo as directrizes
Do professor Salazar.

Tens o olhar misterioso
Com um jeito nevoento,
Indeciso, duvidoso,
Minha Marta Francisca,
Meu amor, meu orçamento!

A tua face de rosa
Tem o colorido esquivo
De uma nota oficiosa.
Quem dera ter-te em meus braços,
Ó meu saldo positivo!

E o teu cabelo — não choro
Seu regresso ao natural —Abandona o padrão-ouro
Amor, pomba, estrada, porta,
Sindicato nacional!

Não sei por que me desprezas.
Fita-me mais um instante,
Lindo corte nas despesas,
Adorada abolição
Da dívida flutuante!

Com que madrigais mostrar-te
Este amor que é chama viva?
Ouve, escuta: vou chamar-te
Assembleia Nacional
Câmara Corporativa.

Como te amo, como, como,
Meu Acto Colonial!
De amor já quase não como,
Meu Estatuto de Trabalho,
Meu Banco de Portugal!

Meu crédito no estrangeiro!
Meu encaixe — ouro adorado!
Serei sempre o teu romeiro...
Pousa a cabeça em meu ombro,
Ó meu Conselho de Estado!

Ó minha corporativa,
Minha lei de Estado Novo,
Não me sejas mais esquiva!
Meu coração quer guarida
Ó linda Casa do Povo!

União Nacional querida,
Teus olhos enchem de mágoa
A sombra da minha vida
Que passa como uma esquadra
Sobre a energia da água.

Que aristocrático ri,
O teu cabelo em cifrões — Finanças em mise-en-plis! —
Meu activo plebiscito,
Nunca desceste a eleições!

Por isso nunca me escolhes
E a minha esperança é vã.
Nem sequer por dó me acolhes,
Minha imprevidente linda
Civilização cristã!

Bem sei: por estes meus modos
Nunca me podes amar.
Olha, desculpa-mas todas.
Estou seguindo as directrizes
Do professor Salazar.

Tens o olhar misterioso
Com um jeito nevoento,
Indeciso, duvidoso,
Minha Marta Francisca,
Meu amor, meu orçamento!

A tua face de rosa
Tem o colorido esquivo
De uma nota oficiosa.
Quem dera ter-te em meus braços,
Ó meu saldo positivo!

E o teu cabelo — não choro
Seu regresso ao natural —Abandona o padrão-ouro
Amor, pomba, estrada, porta,
Sindicato nacional!

Não sei por que me desprezas.
Fita-me mais um instante,
Lindo corte nas despesas,
Adorada abolição
Da dívida flutuante!

Com que madrigais mostrar-te
Este amor que é chama viva?
Ouve, escuta: vou chamar-te
Assembleia Nacional
Câmara Corporativa.

Como te amo, como, como,
Meu Acto Colonial!
De amor já quase não como,
Meu Estatuto de Trabalho,
Meu Banco de Portugal!

Meu crédito no estrangeiro!
Meu encaixe — ouro adorado!
Serei sempre o teu romeiro...
Pousa a cabeça em meu ombro,
Ó meu Conselho de Estado!

Ó minha corporativa,
Minha lei de Estado Novo,
Não me sejas mais esquiva!
Meu coração quer guarida
Ó linda Casa do Povo!

União Nacional querida,
Teus olhos enchem de mágoa
A sombra da minha vida
Que passa como uma esquadra
Sobre a energia da água.

Que aristocrático ri,
O teu cabelo em cifrões — Finanças em mise-en-plis! —
Meu activo plebiscito,
Nunca desceste a eleições!

Por isso nunca me escolhes
E a minha esperança é vã.
Nem sequer por dó me acolhes,
Minha imprevidente linda
Civilização cristã!

Bem sei: por estes meus modos
Nunca me podes amar.
Olha, desculpa-mas todas.
Estou seguindo as directrizes
Do professor Salazar.

Não ter deveres, nem horas certas, nem realidades...
Ser uma ave humana
Que passe haleyonica sobre a intransigência do mundo —
Ganhando o pão da sua noite com o suor da fronte dos outros —
Faz-tudo triste
No coliseu com lágrimas,
E compère antigo, um pouco mais cheio que Vénus de Milo,
Na insubsistência dos acasos.
E um pouco de sol, ao menos, para os sonhos onde não vivo.

Still Arethusa keeps her course,
For, though the corporal dark of earth
Stifle, like an unconscious nurse,
The impulse for her second birth,
Yet her true will must ever be
These captive waves that shall be free.

So the forgotten water ever
With withdrawn life and hid emotion
Moves on in darkness, still a river,
Towards a sun upon an ocean;
And the found place there will not cease
To be the river's, not the sea's.

So keeps she, under the void dark
Of her oppressed seclusion still
Her careful self, whose soul shall work
Towards the outlet from the hill,
Past hived vaults and humid walls
And her dropped noise of waterfalls.
Uncaught throughout the spell of caves,
Forlorn under the mother stone,
Still the great destined river craves
Its purpose, liquid and alone,
And more, yet less, under the hills
Its unresisting motion wills.

And ever, while time frets the rocks
And space shuts dark the godless flow,
She runs, a will in waves that flocks
Around a darkness for a glow;
And onward still, because it is
What shall be, and the Gods are this.

And, still remembering to forget,
Still onward because Fate inclines,
Veiled Arethusa still doth wet
With purpose the weird cavern shrines,
Where, past their blind, dead, solid being,
Her watery will moves on to seeing.

Dim under phosphorescent zones
Of darkness wronged and stalactites,
Or complete darkness, where the moans
Of waters wail for destined sights,
Her course, that knows no day, doth still
Work out to day its nightly will.

Till, bright at last in the aired arms
Of the lone rocks laid in the sea,
Bare Arethusa free her charms
To light and to its panic glee,
And the sea clasp her, as she were
Venus there born and mistress there.

1 .
Depois de se ter passado
Os noventa mais vereis
Vir aquele desejado
Que há-de fundar novas leis.

2 .
Verá o Leão fatal
Que de Portugal lhe vem
O que lhe há-de fazer mal,
Aquele escondido Rei.

3.
Aquela manhã chuvosa
Com névoa muito escura
Verá de Deus a figura
Fazer Lisboa ditosa.

4.
Névoa já é levantada
Lá junto do meio-dia;
Haveis de a ver descoberta
A oitava maravilha.

SAUDAÇÂO A W. WHITMAN

Para cantar-te,
Para cantar-te como tu quererias que te cantassem,
Melhor é cantar a terra, o mar, as cidades e os campos —
Os homens, as mulheres, as crianças,
As profissões, [...], as (...)
Todas as coisas que, juntas, formam a síntese-universo,
Todas as coisas que, separadas, valem a síntese-Universo,
Todas as coisas que universais formam a síntese Deus.

Ah, o poema que te cantasse bem,
Seria o poema que todo cantasse tudo,
O poema em que estivessem todas as vestes e todas as sedas —
Todos os perfumes e todos os sabores
E o contacto em todos os sentidos do tacto de todas as coisas tangíveis.

Poema que dispensasse a música, música com vida,
Poema que transcendesse a pintura, pintura com alma

SAUDAÇÂO A W. WHITMAN

Para cantar-te,
Para cantar-te como tu quererias que te cantassem,
Melhor é cantar a terra, o mar, as cidades e os campos —
Os homens, as mulheres, as crianças,
As profissões, [...], as (...)
Todas as coisas que, juntas, formam a síntese-universo,
Todas as coisas que, separadas, valem a síntese-Universo,
Todas as coisas que universais formam a síntese Deus.

Ah, o poema que te cantasse bem,
Seria o poema que todo cantasse tudo,
O poema em que estivessem todas as vestes e todas as sedas —
Todos os perfumes e todos os sabores
E o contacto em todos os sentidos do tacto de todas as coisas tangíveis.

Poema que dispensasse a música, música com vida,
Poema que transcendesse a pintura, pintura com alma

Todas as horas faço gaffes de civilidade e etiqueta
(A vida social é complexa para a minha fraqueza de nervos)
Mas nunca existiu quem só tivesse vivido em alma
Numa eterna luta de Janus.

Arre, a humanidade é uma coisa muito complexa...
Tenho-a observado com os olhos e os
nervos, e ainda não percebi.
(Compreender é um navio ao longe)

Toda a gente que tenho conhecido

Estou farto de semi-deuses!
Onde é que há gente no mundo?

Não tenho um amigo, um conhecido, em quem batessem
Ninguém que eu conheça perdeu o amor de uma mulher.
Tenho feito muitas coisas más, muitas coisas reles, muitas infâmias.
Tenho sido cobarde, revoltante, sujo.
Não encontro ninguém assim.
Todos têm sido príncipes, os que têm andado comigo

Todas as horas faço gaffes de civilidade e etiqueta
(A vida social é complexa para a minha fraqueza de nervos)
Mas nunca existiu quem só tivesse vivido em alma
Numa eterna luta de Janus.

Arre, a humanidade é uma coisa muito complexa...
Tenho-a observado com os olhos e os
nervos, e ainda não percebi.
(Compreender é um navio ao longe)

Toda a gente que tenho conhecido

Estou farto de semi-deuses!
Onde é que há gente no mundo?

Não tenho um amigo, um conhecido, em quem batessem
Ninguém que eu conheça perdeu o amor de uma mulher.
Tenho feito muitas coisas más, muitas coisas reles, muitas infâmias.
Tenho sido cobarde, revoltante, sujo.
Não encontro ninguém assim.
Todos têm sido príncipes, os que têm andado comigo

Now are no Janus' temple‑doors thrown wide
To utter thougts of war upon the land.
Now doth no double facing God divide
Him from himself, that sight of him may brand
The symbol of opposed things upon
Our hearts that at our eyes on him are thrown.
Now do no pagan cults tremble at Mars' name
Because bad‑auguring birds like clouds have flown
O'er nations' frontiers, nor do oracles frame
Strange answers unto ears of armoured chiefs,
Replies that leave perplexed their perplexed eyes
That know not whether that heart‑pang they hear
Is the first grief heralding their peoples' griefs
Or the strange cold that the Gods' mysteries
Speak to his soul that is to conquest near.

No. All is dead that wreathed war round with Gods.
Nor omens mute, nor the foiled sacrifice,
No dim words spoken by spilt blood on sods.
Nay, nor the later sense that vice and sloth,
When in a people's heart they nestle both
Do on them call the wrath of heaven, us move.
Our souls are void, like a stage mummer's cries
And our hate and our love mock hate and love.

Something of coldness, like the coming winter,
Crosses our autumn like a profecy.
Round our leaves now no swallows circle and twitter.
No more, no more, shall we heart‑wholesome be.
There is a sadness that with us doth stay
Like a billetted guest, and far away
Our ultimate death awaits us like a sea.

Alas! that even the poesy of wars
Should, like a tired thing, have gone where things go.
Alas! alas! that we have come thus far
Knowing still the same nothing that we know,
To meet more than ourselves, nor no throe
That shall be herald of a newer man.
And ever as the old woes the cold new woe
Fills with its deathless measure our life's span.

No, even the Christian manner of love or hate
Is dead. No God that lives in us survives
The winter in us that snow‑kills God and Fate
And has iced o'er the rivers of our lives.
With cuirass and with pike we laid aside
All that made battle worth the death in it.
Our science‑made war‑gestures now deride
The great eternal things that war doth fit
With helm and armour.
With mortal pomp yet pomp. We are on death's side.

All is as if were not part of it.
All clashes, rings and turmoils as if far.
The foiled imagining within our wit
Ousts war's clear image with bare thought of war.
Our plans are cold, our courage cold, our eyes
When they look inwards dream but the far plain
And vague, picture‑seen faces and their pain
Touches no sense of ours, nor do dreamed cries
Rise in us. What cold thing has become of
Our very hatred? What way has strength gone?
We die as if the sky were not above
Our heads and beneath us sand, grass and stone.

The great eternal presence of all things
No longer doth with us collaborate
To lift our hearts up on invisible wings
And bid us tremble at the thrill of Fate.
The possible fall of empires doth no more
Touch us with that great and mysterious dread
That John on Pathmos saw rise o'er his head
Like a space‑filling sea without a shore.

Alas! our nobler fear has gone away
Where our weariness pointed. We are blind
And learned to blindness. Our wild gestures stray
From us like leaves that fall far off with the wind,
And we fight clearly, coldly, night and day.

These things I thought, knowing that far behind
My visible horizon war was slave
Of that Invisible Master who doth wave
His speechless hand o'er continents and seas
And men like reaped things fall, and the blind wind
With groping hands that in the night are blind
Touches the dead men's faces' mysteries.

This I thought when, lo! before me there was
A door of iron, or what iron seemed,
An unsized portal, and its live‑seeming lock
Seemed all the uses of a lock to mock.
To see that door was to know none could pass
Through it, nor could its other‑side be dreamed.

A ribbon of broad stairs led up to it
But had no meaning, like a laugh unseen,
I looked and the door seemed to sway as hit
By blows, but no blows fell on it. That screen
Was interposed between me and no scene,
Yet, like an eye staring from out the night,
It touched my heart cold with its iron mean.
And this was not in space nor in a light.

Somewhere in me where dreams do themselves show
And have an inner meaning God doth know,
The door was set, and it seemed to my soul
That there since some inner eternity
It ever had been and I something had seen,
Yet half forgot, that like a half‑shown scroll,
Concealed its sense in what it showed to me.

And lo! as my heart looked, the door grew clear
As a near‑lit thing seen in a black night,
And a great sense of a great coming fear
Was fear already in my heart's affright.
Then as I looked I saw - yet it did seem
That in my vision that had ever been -
From beneath the strange door down the steps flow
A string of silent blood, that step by step,
Fell with a motion desolate and slow.

The thin red stream seemed conscious of its course
Though its course seemed to be none, but to fall.
I looked and it fell ever, with a force
Of relinquishment to its fall, a knell
To some hope in me, and the blood
That ever was but a small line did flood
All my pained soul and made it red. The spell
Of its thin redness spreade o'er my thought's mood
And all my thoughts became a great red wall
Set up in front of what in me doth brood.

Then everything shifted, yet was the same.
I looked on as one who sees a child's game
And finds its eyes at interest in it
And knows not why. A sense of end did hit
My power of having feelings with a rain
That did with deep red all my dim soul stain
As it had stained that soul.

Then all the outer world was dashed to night
And, though no floor remained, no sides, no light
To that space‑missed new world, set far from being,
Yet by some clearer virtue of my seeing
All I saw was without nor left nor right
With a name to it, without a place
Even in itself, without an I to see.
The mere great door and the red blood's thin trace
And all the rest was void and mystery.

Then all again seemed changing unto some
New, unimaginable and fearful thing.
The door and that blood‑line seemed to come
A strange new‑featured Face looking out through
The Universe's whole frame, traversing
It like light an invisible glass - a wing
Belonging to no bird our thoughts construe.

Then the door seemed to recede - nay, to have
Receded, when I knew not, nor was there
A when, for Time seem'd as seems a far wave
On a wide sea, something gone past. The bare
Eternal door seemed to have gone to the end
Of a visible infinity, and all
That now remained on which my soul could spend
Its terror was the blood ever at its fall.

Then, though still the same small line of red,
The blood seeemed to grow glass and in it I saw
A mighty river full of strange things - dead
Men, children, wrecks of bridges, cities, thrones,
And still the line was a small red line, (...)
Of other meaning than that
That before God for the clear world atones.

But the (...) visions in that line contained
Seemed wide as space. The red line seemed a slit
In a thin door through which our eyes can see
Large fields, a city and the whole sky stained
With clouds, and all this in the line could be;
And from some unknown where I looked on it.

It seemed the edge of a cube opening
Sideways to sides of visions, more and more.
Now and then across its glass - like being a wing
Passed a tremor ran over everything
That had in it a clear and tragic being.
Then ceased. And from, past space, the door
Still held my unconscious consciousness of seeing.

It seemed sometimes a bright, red moving veil
And through it as through a stained window I guessed
A night and stars on a vague pale day pressed,
On a same horizon desolate and pale.

Then, as I stared, suddenly before me,
Like a fan suddenly opened, the blood‑line
Took space from side to side, leaving naught to me
Left or right of it. Its red (...) fact
Became a red Niagara, a cataract.
But there were no steps, nothing: it did fall
As if drawn in the air, over no edge, and all
Was this and this was its own mystery.

Then lo! over the edge, no longer now,
But empires rolled, and I saw Greece and Rome
Pass. And still over the eternal flow
Reddened from left to right my inner sight's home
Of seeing. And all like to God's blood did come
Like a great rain off a huge thorn‑crowned brow.

And I saw more and more strange empires roll
Down and some I knew not, nor seeing them, guessed.
Awhile their falling the fall's brink caressed
Then they sunk down somewhere within my soul,
And my soul was the soul of all the world,
And from my (...) eyes that saw all this
Suddenly I felt, as if a flag unfurled,
God in me look out at these mysteries.

My eyes seemed windows of another sight
Of someone set behind my soul in the night
Looking through my eyes and my sight, mine own
Was but a glass those unknown eyes looked through,
And still the vision was blood falling down
In cataracts into Mystery, red and slow.

I became one with world and Fate and God,
And the great River that came on and fell
Let me see through its veil of (...) blood
The stars shine and a vague moonlight, then fell
Something from me. The cataract came more near
To my sight; then it seemed into mine eyes
To creep to become with them and the fear
To pass behind them into some soul (...).

Then all that did remain was the stars light
And again in the dark infinity
My pity and my dread alone with me
And my dream's meaning like a paling night.

Now are no Janus' temple‑doors thrown wide
To utter thougts of war upon the land.
Now doth no double facing God divide
Him from himself, that sight of him may brand
The symbol of opposed things upon
Our hearts that at our eyes on him are thrown.
Now do no pagan cults tremble at Mars' name
Because bad‑auguring birds like clouds have flown
O'er nations' frontiers, nor do oracles frame
Strange answers unto ears of armoured chiefs,
Replies that leave perplexed their perplexed eyes
That know not whether that heart‑pang they hear
Is the first grief heralding their peoples' griefs
Or the strange cold that the Gods' mysteries
Speak to his soul that is to conquest near.

No. All is dead that wreathed war round with Gods.
Nor omens mute, nor the foiled sacrifice,
No dim words spoken by spilt blood on sods.
Nay, nor the later sense that vice and sloth,
When in a people's heart they nestle both
Do on them call the wrath of heaven, us move.
Our souls are void, like a stage mummer's cries
And our hate and our love mock hate and love.

Something of coldness, like the coming winter,
Crosses our autumn like a profecy.
Round our leaves now no swallows circle and twitter.
No more, no more, shall we heart‑wholesome be.
There is a sadness that with us doth stay
Like a billetted guest, and far away
Our ultimate death awaits us like a sea.

Alas! that even the poesy of wars
Should, like a tired thing, have gone where things go.
Alas! alas! that we have come thus far
Knowing still the same nothing that we know,
To meet more than ourselves, nor no throe
That shall be herald of a newer man.
And ever as the old woes the cold new woe
Fills with its deathless measure our life's span.

No, even the Christian manner of love or hate
Is dead. No God that lives in us survives
The winter in us that snow‑kills God and Fate
And has iced o'er the rivers of our lives.
With cuirass and with pike we laid aside
All that made battle worth the death in it.
Our science‑made war‑gestures now deride
The great eternal things that war doth fit
With helm and armour.
With mortal pomp yet pomp. We are on death's side.

All is as if were not part of it.
All clashes, rings and turmoils as if far.
The foiled imagining within our wit
Ousts war's clear image with bare thought of war.
Our plans are cold, our courage cold, our eyes
When they look inwards dream but the far plain
And vague, picture‑seen faces and their pain
Touches no sense of ours, nor do dreamed cries
Rise in us. What cold thing has become of
Our very hatred? What way has strength gone?
We die as if the sky were not above
Our heads and beneath us sand, grass and stone.

The great eternal presence of all things
No longer doth with us collaborate
To lift our hearts up on invisible wings
And bid us tremble at the thrill of Fate.
The possible fall of empires doth no more
Touch us with that great and mysterious dread
That John on Pathmos saw rise o'er his head
Like a space‑filling sea without a shore.

Alas! our nobler fear has gone away
Where our weariness pointed. We are blind
And learned to blindness. Our wild gestures stray
From us like leaves that fall far off with the wind,
And we fight clearly, coldly, night and day.

These things I thought, knowing that far behind
My visible horizon war was slave
Of that Invisible Master who doth wave
His speechless hand o'er continents and seas
And men like reaped things fall, and the blind wind
With groping hands that in the night are blind
Touches the dead men's faces' mysteries.

This I thought when, lo! before me there was
A door of iron, or what iron seemed,
An unsized portal, and its live‑seeming lock
Seemed all the uses of a lock to mock.
To see that door was to know none could pass
Through it, nor could its other‑side be dreamed.

A ribbon of broad stairs led up to it
But had no meaning, like a laugh unseen,
I looked and the door seemed to sway as hit
By blows, but no blows fell on it. That screen
Was interposed between me and no scene,
Yet, like an eye staring from out the night,
It touched my heart cold with its iron mean.
And this was not in space nor in a light.

Somewhere in me where dreams do themselves show
And have an inner meaning God doth know,
The door was set, and it seemed to my soul
That there since some inner eternity
It ever had been and I something had seen,
Yet half forgot, that like a half‑shown scroll,
Concealed its sense in what it showed to me.

And lo! as my heart looked, the door grew clear
As a near‑lit thing seen in a black night,
And a great sense of a great coming fear
Was fear already in my heart's affright.
Then as I looked I saw - yet it did seem
That in my vision that had ever been -
From beneath the strange door down the steps flow
A string of silent blood, that step by step,
Fell with a motion desolate and slow.

The thin red stream seemed conscious of its course
Though its course seemed to be none, but to fall.
I looked and it fell ever, with a force
Of relinquishment to its fall, a knell
To some hope in me, and the blood
That ever was but a small line did flood
All my pained soul and made it red. The spell
Of its thin redness spreade o'er my thought's mood
And all my thoughts became a great red wall
Set up in front of what in me doth brood.

Then everything shifted, yet was the same.
I looked on as one who sees a child's game
And finds its eyes at interest in it
And knows not why. A sense of end did hit
My power of having feelings with a rain
That did with deep red all my dim soul stain
As it had stained that soul.

Then all the outer world was dashed to night
And, though no floor remained, no sides, no light
To that space‑missed new world, set far from being,
Yet by some clearer virtue of my seeing
All I saw was without nor left nor right
With a name to it, without a place
Even in itself, without an I to see.
The mere great door and the red blood's thin trace
And all the rest was void and mystery.

Then all again seemed changing unto some
New, unimaginable and fearful thing.
The door and that blood‑line seemed to come
A strange new‑featured Face looking out through
The Universe's whole frame, traversing
It like light an invisible glass - a wing
Belonging to no bird our thoughts construe.

Then the door seemed to recede - nay, to have
Receded, when I knew not, nor was there
A when, for Time seem'd as seems a far wave
On a wide sea, something gone past. The bare
Eternal door seemed to have gone to the end
Of a visible infinity, and all
That now remained on which my soul could spend
Its terror was the blood ever at its fall.

Then, though still the same small line of red,
The blood seeemed to grow glass and in it I saw
A mighty river full of strange things - dead
Men, children, wrecks of bridges, cities, thrones,
And still the line was a small red line, (...)
Of other meaning than that
That before God for the clear world atones.

But the (...) visions in that line contained
Seemed wide as space. The red line seemed a slit
In a thin door through which our eyes can see
Large fields, a city and the whole sky stained
With clouds, and all this in the line could be;
And from some unknown where I looked on it.

It seemed the edge of a cube opening
Sideways to sides of visions, more and more.
Now and then across its glass - like being a wing
Passed a tremor ran over everything
That had in it a clear and tragic being.
Then ceased. And from, past space, the door
Still held my unconscious consciousness of seeing.

It seemed sometimes a bright, red moving veil
And through it as through a stained window I guessed
A night and stars on a vague pale day pressed,
On a same horizon desolate and pale.

Then, as I stared, suddenly before me,
Like a fan suddenly opened, the blood‑line
Took space from side to side, leaving naught to me
Left or right of it. Its red (...) fact
Became a red Niagara, a cataract.
But there were no steps, nothing: it did fall
As if drawn in the air, over no edge, and all
Was this and this was its own mystery.

Then lo! over the edge, no longer now,
But empires rolled, and I saw Greece and Rome
Pass. And still over the eternal flow
Reddened from left to right my inner sight's home
Of seeing. And all like to God's blood did come
Like a great rain off a huge thorn‑crowned brow.

And I saw more and more strange empires roll
Down and some I knew not, nor seeing them, guessed.
Awhile their falling the fall's brink caressed
Then they sunk down somewhere within my soul,
And my soul was the soul of all the world,
And from my (...) eyes that saw all this
Suddenly I felt, as if a flag unfurled,
God in me look out at these mysteries.

My eyes seemed windows of another sight
Of someone set behind my soul in the night
Looking through my eyes and my sight, mine own
Was but a glass those unknown eyes looked through,
And still the vision was blood falling down
In cataracts into Mystery, red and slow.

I became one with world and Fate and God,
And the great River that came on and fell
Let me see through its veil of (...) blood
The stars shine and a vague moonlight, then fell
Something from me. The cataract came more near
To my sight; then it seemed into mine eyes
To creep to become with them and the fear
To pass behind them into some soul (...).

Then all that did remain was the stars light
And again in the dark infinity
My pity and my dread alone with me
And my dream's meaning like a paling night.

A alma humana é porca como um ânus
E a Vantagem dos caralhos pesa em muitas imaginações.

Meu coração desgosta-se de tudo com uma náusea do estômago.
A Távola Redonda foi vendida a peso,
E a biografia do Rei Artur, um galante escreveu-a.
Mas a sucata da cavalaria ainda reina nessas almas, como um perfil distante.

Está frio.
Ponho sobre os ombros o capote que me lembra um xaile —
O xaile que minha tia me punha aos ombros na infância.
Mas os ombros da minha infância sumiram-se antes para dentro dos meus ombros.
E o meu coração da infância sumiu-se antes para dentro do meu coração.

Sim, está frio...
Está frio em tudo que sou, está frio...
Minhas próprias ideias têm frio, como gente velha...
E o frio que eu tenho das minhas ideias terem frio é mais frio do que elas.

Engelho o capote à minha volta...
O Universo da gente... a gente... as pessoas todas!...
A multiplicidade da humanidade misturada
Sim, aquilo a que chamam a vida, como se só houvesse outros e estrelas...
Sim, a vida...
Meus ombros descaem tanto que o capote resvala...
Querem comentário melhor? Puxo-me para cima o capote.

Ah, parte a cara à vida!
Levanta-te com estrondo no sossego de ti!

Através do ruído do café cheio de gente
Chega-me a brisa que passa pelo convés
Nas longas viagens, no alto mar, no verão
Perto dos trópicos (no amontoado nocturno do navio —
Sacudido regularmente pela hélice palpitante —
Vejo passar os uniformes brancos dos oficiais de bordo).
E essa brisa traz um ruído de mar-alto, pluro-mar
E a nossa civilização não pertence à minha reminiscência.

Através do ruído do café cheio de gente
Chega-me a brisa que passa pelo convés
Nas longas viagens, no alto mar, no verão
Perto dos trópicos (no amontoado nocturno do navio —
Sacudido regularmente pela hélice palpitante —
Vejo passar os uniformes brancos dos oficiais de bordo).
E essa brisa traz um ruído de mar-alto, pluro-mar
E a nossa civilização não pertence à minha reminiscência.

São poucos os momentos de prazer na vida...
É gozá-la... Sim, já o ouvi dizer muitas vezes
Eu mesmo já o disse. (Repetir é viver.)
É gozá-la não é verdade?

Gozêmo-la, loura falsa, gozêmo-la, casuais e incógnitos,
Tu, com teus gestos de distinção cinematográfica
Com teus olhares para o lado a nada,
Cumprindo a tua função de animal emaranhado;
Eu no plano inclinado da consciência para a indiferença,
Amemo-nos aqui. Tempo é só um dia.
Tenhamos o [romantismo?] dele!
Por trás de mim vigio, involuntariamente.
Sou qualquer nas palavras que te digo, e são suaves — e as que esperas.
Do lado de cá dos meus Alpes, e que Alpes! somos do corpo.
Nada quebra a passagem prometida de uma ligação futura,
E vai tudo elegantemente, como em Paris, Londres, Berlim.
"Percebe-se", dizes, «que o senhor viveu muito no estrangeiro."
E eu que sinto vaidade em ouvi-lo!
Só tenho medo que me vás falar da tua vida...
Cabaret de Lisboa? Visto que o é, seja.
Lembro-me subitamente, visualmente, do anúncio no jornal...
"Rendez-vous da sociedade elegante",
Isto.
Mas nada destas reflexões temerárias e futuras
Interrompe aquela conversa involuntária em que te sou qualquer.
Falo medias e imitações
E cada vez, vejo e sinto, gostas mais de mim a valer que (...) hoje;
É nesta altura que, debruçando-me de repente sobre a mesa
Te segredo em segredo o que exactamente convinha.
Ris, toda olhar e em parte boca, efusiva e próxima,
E eu gosto verdadeiramente de ti.
Soa em nós o gesto sexual de nos irmos embora.
Rodo a cabeça para o pagamento...
Alegre, alacre, sentindo-te, falas...
Sorrio.
Por trás do sorriso, não sou eu.

CARRY NATION

Não uma santa estética, como Santa Teresa,
Não uma santa dos dogmas,
Não uma santa.
Mas uma santa humana, maluca e divina,
Materna, agressivamente materna,
Odiosa, como todas as santas,
Persistente, com a loucura da santidade.
Odeio-a e estou de cabeça descoberta
E dou-lhe vivas sem saber porquê!
Estupor americano aureolado de estrelas!
Bruxa de boa intenção...

Não lhe desfolhem rosas na campa,
Mas louros, os louros da glória
Façamos-lhe a glória e o insulto!
Bebamos à saúde da sua imortalidade
Esse vinho forte de bêbados.

Eu, que nunca fiz nada no mundo,
Eu, que nunca soube querer nem saber,
Eu, que fui sempre a ausência da minha vontade,
Eu te saúdo, mãezinha maluca, sistema sentimental!
Exemplar da aspiração humana!
Maravilha do bom gesto, duma grande vontade!

Minha Joana de Arc sem pátria!
Minha Santa Teresa humana!
Estúpida como todas as santas
E militante como a alma que quer vencer o mundo!

É no vinho que odiaste que deves ser saudada!
É com brindes gritados chorando que te canonizaremos!

Saudação de inimigo a inimigo!
Eu, tantas vezes caindo de bêbado só por não querer sentir,
Eu, embriagado tantas vezes, por não ter alma bastante,
Eu, o teu contrário,
Arranco a espada aos anjos, aos anjos que guardam o Éden,
E ergo-a em êxtase, e grito ao teu nome.

Mas mesmo assim, de repente mas de vagar, de vagar,
Atravessando todas estas coisas modernas e presentes,
Vindo naturalmente através de todas estas coisas e estes ruídos,
Como se tudo isto fosse um vidro fosco transparente a essa luz,
Através do ruído dos guindastes, pelos interstícios do marulhar dos barcos,
Coando pelas frinchas dos assobios dos comboios,
Misteriosamente repassando, ensopando a faina das gentes,
Torna, através do moderno e do actual, a eterna voz marítima,
A eterna voz representativa das grandes coisas oceânicas,

Tudo se funde no movimento
(...)
E cada arbusto fitado
Nem é o terceiro que está a seguir.

A bondade da chama nocturna em casas distantes,
Os lares dos outros meras estrelas humanas na noite
A indefinida felicidade para nós de ver outros a distância.

She

If every tear of mine were gold
        And every sigh a tear,
Wouldst thou not then with kisses bold
        Entrap them falling clear?
If at each word I spoke of love
        Pearls rained from out the air,
How pleasant would to thee then prove
        To hear me speak for e'er!

He

If at each look of love I cast
        A cheque were signed and made,
If each tear's ending were the last
Touch of received and paid;
If each soft glance were a banknote
        And the same every sigh.
Wouldst thou not have me learn by rote
        Love's shows of misery?

Both

What can we do? What are we both
        But beings of our time?
Gold is the meat of living's broth,
        The vowel of the rhyme.
Even a token sad and old.
        A certain price will woo.
Our love would but be true as gold
        If we were gold all through.

MANIFESTO DE ÁLVARO DE CAMPOS

Ora porra!
Nem o rei chegou, nem o Afonso Costa morreu quando caiu do
carro abaixo!
E ficou tudo na mesma, tendo a mais só os alemães a menos...
E para isto se fundou Portugal!