Alma

I could not be thou, being yet not thou
Were I not God; so to God my thoughts go
(To reach thee, to possess from within
To possess from being not from seeing)
Because, substance of substance, He alone
Can love being all things, and all in each one.
Thus is my love (...) religion.


And by being born, not born; by being love
None; and by being made move, not made to move,
But, indefinable and indistinct,
Wearing no form nor purpose nor precinct
Of use, it hangs, with my soul in its wake
An interval between me and thee, between
Ourselves and God, between thou being but seen
And being loved, abstract absance of place
(...) that
Life, substance of thou being a living thing
Where thought and will and feeling are one thing.


Of the two parts of love, becoming other
And unbecoming self, I do one choose —
The unbecoming, and the other lose.
Yet, as to unbecome must be becoming
Some other thing, as the end for roaming
Makes the thing found where will no matter binds,
The unbecoming of me sure love finds.
Yet if it finds the loved thing, yet not thee,
What thing finds it, that it sought not to be?
What but love's own abstraction, interval
Between souls. And as aether is purest of all
Where filling the mere spaces between things,
Because the more unmixed, the love that clings
To my large disembodiment is best,
Because no object, save love, limits its
(…)
But here not aether but consciousness is
The universal substance, so in this
Less difference between this substance and
God is there — so, if right I understand,
This love which to obtain thee loses thee
And which to complete me uncompletes me,
Which the mere interval doth occupy
Whether neither thy soul nor my soul doth lie,
To which my mere love's force abstractly sends
My void outgoing, and there my being ends,
And so the ends my being had in going
Equally endeth — this love thus foregoing
The object and the subject to be done
By missing into pure Relation;
This love finds God by its internal force,
For when all things are lost God is the loss.

See then how I, starting from me to thee,
Have like a sailor that sets out i' th' sea
For some shore, and the winds drive him away
And this chance casts him on some better bay
Than his intention had been to discover.
Yet if discovering were intended, ever
By what discovered is, where it not willed,
The purpose of discovering is filled,
And if the unwilled discovery is better,
The loss is gam, and that which seemed to fetter
The original purpose, the harsh wind,
Does lead the unled to where he best can find.

Yet this is not the journey's end, for whence
The sailor now arrived, to recommence
He may begin his voyage original
And from the better to the worse recall
For as the original purpose, better less,
Is in the found included, he may thence
His foiled task recompose and now to miss
The purpose that his (...)
So I, from God, the better may go out
To thee, and from within thee, not about
Thy presence, enter into thee and be
The very personality of thee.

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.

Quando há música, parece
Que dormes, e assim te calas,
Mas se a música falece
Acordo, e não me falas.

Que te fez assim tão linda
Não o fez para mostrar
Que se é mais linda ainda
Quando se sabe negar.

Todos lá vão para a festa
Com um grande azul de céu.
Nada resta, nada resta...
Resta sim, que resta eu.

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

O heavy day that comes with so much glee
Out of the East.
It turquoises the silence of the sea
And makes a feast
Of blueness of the waves that shiver and flee.

O heavy day because my love hath gone
And taken away
His white arms and his lips like poppies grown
Athwart that day
When I first saw him and felt my heart moan.

My hands are stretched towards his coming, and
He cometh not.
He seems a woman and his gesturing hand
Too oft bath wrought
Dreams of strange vice with him through my heart's sand.

He is scarce more than a child. His body is white,
His arms lie bare
Across my neck and cling like a delight
Of which my share
Is painful like a far sail in the night.

Oh, love, return! All this is dreams of thee
Return and wake
My trembling frame to that vile misery
That love doth take
For his body when the lovers are such as we.

Golden‑haired boy that cannot love me so
As I love him,
Look, life is short, our lips fade... Ay, I know
I am ugly and dim
But love a little or seem... Love me and go
Yet love ere going, and then let me dream
On what was real while life fades and goes slow...

Let them speak ill of me. I do not care
Why shouldst thou care that fairer art than I?
My lips so oft have rested on thy hair,
So oft on thy lips, and so oft
On thy white arms that yet pretend to lie
On my dreams cushions like a vague thing soft...

Let them speak. Life is sweet if thy lips mean
Life. Love is sweet if thou art love.
The scorners cannot know what kisses screen
Our throbbing heart from heart nor prove
That full possession our mad love can scene
With perverse actions like an empire's end
That sinks among the galleys and doth blend
Its sunset with the landscape's emerald green.

Let them speak. Put thy hand within my hand
And let us love as maid and boy are said
To love. But we are none and love is red
On our hot souls thrill and understand.
Oh, to thy bed!

Oh to thy bed, fairer than maidens' couches
And curtained over with strange care for strangeness,
Let's to thy bed and kiss naked while touches
Selected from our hotter dreams transcend
Lust with thought lust acted upon our frames.
The magic misery of our wedded names
Shall light the future with impassioned strangeness.

Antinous!

Uma boneca de trapos
Não se parte se cair.
Fizeste-me a alma em farrapos...
Bem: não se pode partir.

Even as great Macchiavel, shut fast from all,
His court dress donned to visit his invention,
So I, when the commanding Muse doth call,
Give to the wide world sleep and inattention.

I close the door to all the man in me,
To friend, relation, countryman and self,
Closeting myself with eternity
And both the good and ill of me do shelf.

I strive to please Athena, not mankind.
No time shall call me out, or place seduce,
Nor ache to please, nor fear to offend me blind
To the great passion for true beauty's use.

Mine own self I displease, if it so fit
The claiming tyranny and press of wit.

O guardanapo dobrado
Quer dizer que se não volta.
Tenho o coração atado:
Vê se a tua mão mo solta.

Quando compões o cabelo
Com tua mão distraída
Fazes-me um grande novelo
No pensamento da vida.

Teus olhos de quem não fita
Vagueiam, estão na distância.
Se fosses menos bonita,
Isso não tinha importância.

All my heart weeps for
Is a cottage left
By some one before
Time into space crept,
A small cottage left
Near a silent shore.

There the constant waves
Murmur like vain rest.
There the soft raves
Like a soul possessed
Of rest that not saves.

There the shore‑winds breathe
Possibilities
Of less cares than wreathe
Round our lives their cries
From up and beneath.

Where that cottage is
Rests with wishing it.
Is therewhere is bliss?
No, nor does bliss fit
Into that strange place.

Why desire it then?
Ah, it's different
From the homes of men.
There perhaps are blent
Dreams and what we ken.

There at least alone,
Alone by the sea,
We shall cease to moan...
To moan need not be
Where we are alone...

These are words. Let sleep
Close our eyes to find
That small cottage, deep
In Farness. We are blind
And life is to weep.

Onda que vens e que vais
Mar que vais e depois vens,
Já não sei se tu me atrais,
E, se me atrais, se me tens.

Se te queres despedir
Não te despidas de mim,
Que eu não posso consentir
Que tu me trates assim.

The other day indeed,
With my shoe, on the wall,
I killed a centipede
Which was not there at all.
How can that be?
It's very simple, you see -
Just the beginning of D. T.

When the pink alligator
And the tiger without a head
Begin to take stature
And demanded to be fed,
As I have no shoes
Fit to kill those,
I think I'll start thinking:
Should I stop drinking?

But it really doesn't matter...
Am I thinner or fatter
Because this is this?
Would I be wiser or better
If life were other than this is?

No, nothing is right.
Your love might
Make me better than I
Can be or can try.
But we never know
Darling, I don't know
If the sugar of your heart
Would not turn out candy...
So I let my heart smart
And I drink brandy.

Then the centipede come
Without trouble.
I can see them well.
Or even double.
I'll see them home
With my shoe,
And, when they all go to hell,
I'll go too.

Then, on a whole,
I shall be happy indeed,
Because, with a shoe
Real and true,
I shall kill the true centipede ­-
My lost soul!...

Andei sozinho na praia
Andei na praia a pensar
No jeito da tua saia
Quando lá estiveste a andar.

Floriu a roseira toda
Com as rosas de trepar...
Tua cabeça anda à roda
Mas sabes-te equilibrar.

Tocam sinos a rebate
E levantaste-te logo.
Teu coração só não bate
Por a quem puseste fogo.

Trazes uma cruz no peito.
Não sei se é por devoção.
Antes tivesse o jeito
De ter lá um coração.

Do not think of me. Love me.
That shall somehow suffice.
……
……

Let us be purposeless
Sedately and for a task.
We can be nothing this
Dashes not with the mask
Of being anything...
Be we eer on the wing...

And towards nowhere flying,
Maybe we shall obtain
A thought of what our dying
May steal from life and pain...

O canário já não canta.
Não canta o canário já.
Aquilo que em ti me encanta
Talvez não me encantará.

The sky is a great turquoise shining glee,
All the earth is gathered up in the blue sea
Ev'n the green fields tend thereto in their joy,
The whole day playeth like a happy boy
Among the dales the hours build with their glee.

How happy, had I no cares, would I be!

But there is too much sorrow in mere seeing
The feminine disease of consciousness
Eats like a worm into the source of being.
The very thought I live gives me distress.
My heart is felt by me like some heavy place.