Alma

O coração é pequeno,
Coitado, e trabalha tanto!
De dia a ter que chorar,
De noite a fazer o pranto...

Nem vã esperança vem, não anos vão,
Desesperança, Lídia, nos governa
        A consumanda vida.
Só espera ou desespera quem conhece
Que há que esperar. Nós, no labento curso
        Do ser, só ignoramos.
Breves no triste gozo desfolhamos
Rosas. Mais breves que nós fingem legar
        A comparada vida.

Quantas vezes a memória
Para fingir que inda é gente,
Nos conta uma grande história
Em que ninguém está presente.

Ser feliz é um jugo, o ser grande
É uma servidão: tudo repugno
        Salvo esta majestade.

Nirvana

Vou dormir, dormir, dormir,
Vou dormir sem despertar,
Mas não dormir sem sentir
Que estou dormindo a sonhar.

Não insciência e só treva
Mas também estrelas a abrir
Olhos cujo olhar me enleva,
Que estou sonhando a dormir.

Constelada inexistência
Em que subsiste de meu
Só uma abstracta insciência
Una com estrelas e céu.

Com que vida encherei os poucos breves
Dias que me são dados? Será minha
        A minha vida ou dada
        A outros ou a sombras?
À sombra de nós mesmos quantos homens
Inconscientes nos sacrificamos,
        E um destino cumprimos
        Nem nosso nem alheio!
Ó deuses imortais, saiba eu ao menos
Aceitar sem querê-lo, sorridente,
        O curso áspero e duro
        Da estrada permitida.
Porém nosso destino é o que for nosso,
Que nos deu a sorte, ou, alheio fado,
        Anónimo a um anónimo,
        Nos arrasta a corrente.

Fiz estoirar um cartucho
Contra a parede do lado.
Assim farei eu à vida,
Que o sonhar fez-me assoprado.

Toda a noite, toda a noite,
Toda a noite sem pensar...
Toda a noite sem dormir
E sem tudo isso acabar.

III.

        Eyes are strange things.
Meaning in them becomes life,
        Life in them has wings.

Look at me thus. Thy glance is mad and rare.
Thine eyes show deep and wild an inner strife.
        How they are more than Horror fair!

I love this world and all these men because
I shall not love them long. That we do die
I believe not, bound fast to higher laws,
But that we lose this world do not deny.

This light that in the sea makes many a light,
This breeze so soft when least we feel it most,
May be replaced by a diviner sight
Or by a truer breeze; but these are lost.

Like some strange trick of childhood that was ill
Yet had the childhood, in it I regret
Perchance in some far world sublime and stiIl,
The childhood that I never shall forget —

No, nor these toys of sense —this world, these men —,
Dear now when had because dear when lost then.

[I.]
Take me up in thine arms, oh some mother.
Take me up in thine arms, make me a child.
An endless lack of joy every joy doth smother
That rises in me, sudden or great or mild.

Take me up in thine arms, rock me to sleep.
Rock me to sleep in a great meaningless way.
And may I hear, like one who sleeps in a house by a bay,
A great loud wind rise like a life from the deep
And cease as I fall asleep like a life that passes away.

II.
All I have wished to do, mother, I have not done.
Even what I wish to feel makes mistakes within me.
I grow tired, dimly tired, of the calm and constant sun,
And restless beside the happier restlessness of the sea.

Oh for a boat to believe I might sail in it and go,
Beyond the walls of my sensations' world and become
A floating absence from my worn self, a discarded woe
Trailing behind me likes a ship's trail, shining through
My consciousness of having dropt my life like a lamp in a home.

III.
Mother, my cheeks grow thin with cares I forget to know.
With things I forget to feel, nor know how to think, I pine.
Mine envy, mother, is with the figure of the sturdy man at the wheel,
That does his duty in storms and is salt at soul with good brine.

My heart is lost to a perillous life full of achievement and breath.
My thoughts are given like gifts to a life I could never live.
Teach me how to myself my own life I can forgive.
Teach me how to love life, at least how not to fear death,
And be all that you teach in the sense of a mute kiss you give.


IV.
Rock me to and fro in your arms, mother. It is night.
There is something of endless motion, of final ceasing of care,
In your rocking of me now from now into the light
That the cottage lamp sheds on your rocking fire with the same yellow flare.

Let me sleep, let me sleep, outsleep the ages and Time.
Drift far away from space like a hulk away from shore.
Be your arms around me like a land or a day or a clime,
Be your casual lips on my brow like forgiveness of crime.
Rock me till I lose being, mother, rock me still more.

V.
My pain outgrows my power to feel pain. I am numb. I am faint.
I sicken from having lived no life, but all dreams, dreams, dreams,
My soul is poisoned, mother, with an old and mysterious tai[nt]
And now that you have stopped rocking full on my brow the lamp gleams.

Hide me, mother, from the light for it seems that it sees.
Hide me, make me be blurred against your breast and the night.
Lo! outside the great swell of the dim and eternal seas!
Mother, whom do we wait, to return from beyond the seas?
Is it for anyone at sea that the joy of our lamp we light.

VI.
The wind hath risen, the wind hath risen. Something is colder and truer.
Something of life and its mystery creeps into the room.
Mother, stop the window chinks, make the door fast and sure.
We never know what horror it is that out of the Night may come.

We know not whom we await. It may be worse than the dark.
It may be shapeless unto our thought and dread as God if he be...
Mother, new sounds are creeping like snakes through the darkness. Hark!
Is it the wind you fear? Is it the sea you remark?
Mother, make me to sleep at once, ere I may hear or see.

VII.
When will it born. Mother, this fear and this smart,
This ache as of something lost or something near to be found,
Coils like a viscous impossible manner of snake round the heart
And the night, mother, the night without being nor bound!...
Put your arms so much around me, so much, so close so fast
That they cover the eyes of my fancy and cling round my thought's quick ear.
Mother, let us not see if the night will pass or last.
Let us not think nor be... Let life be as if past.
Let our total and infinite death be the day and the ceasing of fear.

O capilé é barato
E é fresco quando há calor.
Vou sonhar o teu retrato
Já que não tenho melhor.

Amo o que vejo porque deixarei
        Qualquer dia de o ver.
        Amo-o também porque é.

No plácido intervalo em que me sinto,
        Do amar, mais que ser,
        Amo o haver tudo e a mim.
Melhor me não dariam, se voltassem,
        Os primitivos deuses,
        Que também, nada sabem.

I

'Tis a void winter day, sad as a moan.
A sense of loneliness, as of a stone
Upon a grave, or of a rock in sea
Rests like a mighty shadow over me.
I am unnerved, unminded by the pall
Of solemn clouds that, weighty over all,
Curtail the vision; and upon mine ear

The City's rumble brings despair and fear
To crush my spirit free and wild.
        The rain,
Reiterated horribly, again
Beast with its drops at my cold window‑pane
With such a sound as makes us know it cold.
The world is ghostly, undaylike and old,
And weary passengers, with cautious tread,
Yet hurried, walk within the streets soul‑dead
In the unkindness of their hue of lead.

The streets are streamlets, and perpetual
A sound of little waters, on roof, on wall,
Down in the streets, in pipes, in window‑glass
And into rooms doth wetly come and pass.
        All is the rain's.
All is pale wetness, darkness inly cold,
A sentiment of waste things and of old
Making all things exterior sorrows, pains;
And all we hear and feel and know and see
Is wrapt around as with a masking cloak
In inconceivable monotony.

All in the houses and up from the street
Is a long watery shuffle of heavy feet,
A sound of drenched garments, and a sense
Of a sad chillness, latently intense.
Through cracks in doors and windows a gust cold
Of wind penetrates like a memory of old
Times to make freeze my body, ill reclined
Upon a couch, a sufferer with my mind.

Life in the streets is sad, a monotone
More dull than usual ordinariness:
Business and work have lost their usual stress,
The vender's cries are each of them a moan
Grotesque, desolate, as forlorn and half‑dead
Hearts might produce which make a war (?) attempt
At talking normally, as if they not bled.
Half‑childish urchins, gloriously unkempt
Laugh at the water that cart‑wheels upshed.

The muddy urchins in the streets that play
Make shades of envy in my soul to stay.
Couples, some newly‑married, others not,
Who in the commonness of their no‑thought

Have a deep happiness I would not have,
A joy to which I would prefer the grave,
Pass in the street. some gay and some sedate.
I feel me no like men in any way.
I envy those - I speak true - without hate
And without admiration, isolate (?).
I would that l were happy as they are
But not with that their happiness. Thus far
Such living as theirs is were unto me
Misery, penury, monotony.

Alas for all who dream! Alas for us,
Poor poets, more or less mad, more or less
Foolish! In this consists true happiness!
In knowing how to be monotonous.
Happy are they who can see without sorrow
        To‑day yield us to‑morrow
And yet to‑morrow and to‑day to them
Different days because different days,
Which are to me (save that they pass) the same.

II

The view I have of this cold winter day,
The deep depression that makes my thoughts stray
Is but a symbol and a synthesis
Of what my life perpetually is.

How deep my thoughts in pain and sadness are!
How wreck'd my soul in its intense despair!
How desolate, disconsolately mute
My heart is of the words that like scents shoot
From the full flower of true youthfulness!
How locked am I within my own distress!
How in the tragic circle soul‑confined
        Of my abhorred self!
Not one ambition leads me - power nor pelf,
No wish for fame, no love of poor mankind.
But I am weary, desolate and cold
E'vn as this winter day. I have grown old
In watching dreams go by and pass away
        Leaving a memory pure and bright
        Of aught that was and died as light
Without the living horror of decay.

Is this thy life, irresolute soul of mine?
How pale the sun of thy sad morn doth shine!
How it forebodes the cloudiness that comes
Outstretched wings of the storm whose muffled drums
Of warning in the paling day are heard
Deep in the distance lesseningly blurred.

Thou look'st not death nor evil in the face
Poor soul despairing in life's troubled race!
All forms of life, all things have been to thee
Mutations of eternal misery.
All years, all homes to thee have been
In the same drama many a change of scene.
Thou hast not learned to live, but thou dost cling
Madly to life (dreading Death's night severe),
As if life or the world were anything!

A tua saia, que é curta,
Deixa-te a perna a mostrar:
Meu coração já se furta
A sentir sem eu pensar.

Meu amor é fragateiro.
Eu sou a sua fragata.
Alguns vão atrás do cheiro,
Outros vão só pela arreata.

II

Mas antes era o Verbo, aqui perdido
Quando a Infinita Luz, já apagada
Do Caos, chão do Ser, foi levantada
Em Sombra, e o Verbo ausente escurecido.

Mas se a Alma sente a sua forma errada,
Em si, que é Sombra, vê enfim luzido
O Verbo deste Mundo, humano e ungido.
Rosa Perfeita, em Deus crucificada.

Então, senhores do limiar dos Céus,
Podemos ir buscar além de Deus
O Segredo do Mestre e o Bem profundo;

Não só de aqui, mas já de nós, despertos,
No sangue actual de Cristo enfim libertos
Do a Deus que morre a geração do Mundo.

III

Ah, mas aqui, onde irreais erramos,
Dormimos o que somos, e a verdade,
Inda que enfim em sonhos a vejamos,
Vemo-la, porque em sonho, em falsidade.

Sombras buscando corpos, se os achamos
Como sentir a sua realidade?
Com mãos de sombra, Sombras, que tocamos?
Nosso toque é ausência e vacuidade.

Quem desta Alma fechada nos liberta?
Sem ver, ouvimos para além da sala
De ser; mas como, aqui, a porta aberta?

......

Calmo na falsa morte a nós exposto,
O Livro ocluso contra o peito posto,
Nosso Pai Roseacruz conhece e cala.

«Vou trabalhando a peneira
E pensando assim assim.
Eu não nasci para freira.
Gosto que gostem de mim.»

Tenho uma pena que escreve
Aquilo que eu sempre sinta.
Se é mentira, escreve leve.
Se é verdade, não tem tinta.

IV.

1.
When thou didst speak but now I felt
        A terror mad and strange.
Conceive it thou. I could have knelt
To thy lips, to their curve, to its change.
        The talking curve of thy lips
        And thy teeth but slightly shown
Were my delirium's waking whips.
        I felt my reason overthrown.

A super-sensual fetichism
        Haunts my deep-raving brain.
Greater than ever grows the abysm
Of my reason's and feeling's schism,
        Cut with the pickaxe of pain.

More than they show all things contain.

2.
Something not of this world doth lie
        In thy smile, in thy lips live turn;
A figure, a form I know not why
That wakes in me — without a sigh
        But with terror I cannot spurn
        With terror wild and mute —
Is it remembrances, is it
        Desires so vague half-known they flit
And not in thought nor sentiment take root?

        My mind grows madder and more fit
        In everything to catch and find
        Meanings, resemblances defined
        By not a form that thought can hit.

Smile not. Thou canst not comprehend!
        What is this? What truth doth sleep
        In these ravings without end
                And beyond notion deep?
Laugh not. Know'st thou what madness is?
Wonder not. All is mysteries.
        Ask not. For who can reply?
Weep for me, child, but do not love me
Who have in me too much that is above me,
        Too much I cannot call «I».
        Weep for the ruin of my mind
Weep rather, child, that things so deep should move me
        To lose the clear thoughts that could prove me
                One worthy of mankind.

Weep, violin and viol,
        Low flute and fine bassoon.
Lo, an enchanted isle
        Moon‑bound beneath the moon!
My dream‑feet rustle through it
        Chequered by shade and beam.
Oh, could my soul but woo it
        From being but a dream!

Violin, viol and flute.
        Lo, the isle hangs in air!
Through it I wander, mute
        With too much loss of care.
And the air where't doth float
        No air's, but light of moon.
Its paths are known to each note
        Of viol and bassoon.

Yet is it real, that isle,
        As our clear islands mortal?
Do flute, bassoon and viol
        But ope with sound a portal,
And show, somehow, somewhere,
        To what looks out from me
That pendulous island rare
        In a moon‑woven sea?

Maybe 'tis truer than ours.
        How true are these? But lo!
That isle that knows no hours
        Nor needeth hours to know,
And that hath truth and root
        Somewhere known of the moon,
Fades in the fading of flute,
        Violin and bassoon.

Let us rest. Every hour is not the next.
May this wreathe round with more than emptiness
The meaning of the ciphered living text
We owe to living and to thought confess.

Let us rest. Every hour is not the last.
A consolation comes from being late
Even at happiness, lest near winds blast
The present flower and fate still follow fate.

Let us rest. Power is useless and life vain.
To ask means to be answered with not giving.
To move towards pleasure is to walk on pain,
And having to live takes life out of living.

So there is no true thought nor just behest,
Nor pomp worthing having. Let us rest.

I

My tale is simple, sad and brief -
As simple as all tales of grief,
As brief as all that is ours, though
It seem eternal to its woe;
No tale of glorious deeds or fair,
But one short poem of despair;
Dark as all things where man is caught
In the fine‑poisoned nets of thought.
Here is no flame of love's old fire,
Nor song of pent or free desire,
No thousand herses [?] fill its plan,
But it is centred round one man.
A man? A boy, if boyhood be
That where is sober misery.
About a boy all moves, an elf
Careless of happiness or pelf,
But fated to sing but himself.

I was not born to joy nor love.
The earth below, the sky above
Compel a sense within my soul
That deeply, heavily doth roll,
Like a tremendous, mystic sea
In lands where dreams alone can be;
A feeling that a sadness is,
Weeping in broken‑hearted bliss;
A sense that is a deep despair -
I know not why I should feel this
Before the things that are most fair.

Beauty is more than pleasure's joy:
That which must please is made to cloy,
And Nature cloys not with distaste
But gives a sorrow [?], as of past
Things whence the Present does inherit
Something where [...] is and deep
Beauty delicious in a sleep
That is half‑sadness to the spirit.

For Pleasure is not Joy - we know
Joy lives as sorrow in the heart;
One or the other lives; the dart
That Sorrow kills comes from Joy's bow.
Pleasure and distaste are not so.
Sorrow and Joy are as the strange
And unknown forms of life and change
That are ignored in depths of ocean:
Pure is the depth of their emotion.
Pleasure and Pain are not like these,
But as on surfaces of seas
The alternation of their motion
And shows of shifting without end.
Joy may like the sun's light transcend
The clouds of Pain; Pleasure may be
The face and look of Misery.

III

Ay, Nature chills me with deep fear,
For Nature, to my seeing, spent
With looking on my woes too near,
It is but Mystery eloquent.
The plainest stone, the simplest flower -
All have a meaning deep and vast,
Mocking their living of an hour.
But this significance, that hath past
So oft to poet’s song and word,
Makes them but madmen, even as I,
Speaking in outline [?] sense absurd
Strange thoughts for beings that must die.
But Man to me is dreader still,
The thing of thought, feeling and will,
Which is so dark unto mine eyes
That of the sense he calls his soul
- Let not of seeing speak the mole [?] -
I cannot dream to theorize.

For men, who have wrought creeds and codes
And guided nations by the roads
Of feeling and of speculation,
Have seen as much - nothing - as I
Into the world. All could perceive
That Nature aught doth signify:
Beyond this they could stop or rave.
Most raved and therefore could believe.

Yet I, naturally wrapt about,
Normally, as in feathers the bird,
With hesitation and with doubt,
Find all the world a thing absurd.
Because myself, a part of it,
Am an absurdity unfit.

Too young I learnt to reason coldly
And draw conclusions firmly, boldly,
From thoughts and facts to shatter creeds,
Careless of man's mendacious needs.
Preciseness cast in me the seeds
Of madness, and the soil was good
For that abnormal growth of pain
Whose flowers are red, colour of blood.

Too soon I learned to see too clear,
And therefore nothing now can capture
My heart, to which reasoning is rapture,
That sees night where most poets say
«'Tis day - I see it all - ­'tis day.ª
They sing of joy, T sing of fear.

Alas! Why should I stop thus long
Over the illness of my life,
That has Insanity for wife?
Turn I back with an impulse strong.
Leave I this shallowness and sing.
The deeper sorrow of my song.