Fé, Espiritualidade e Religião

Ó curva do horizonte, quem te passa,
Passa da vista, não de ser ou estar.
Não chameis à alma, que da vida esvoaça,
Morta. Dizei: Sumiu-se além no mar.

Ó mar, sê símbolo da vida toda —
Incerto, o mesmo e mais que o nosso ver!
Finda a viagem da morte e a terra à roda,
Voltou a alma e a nau a aparecer.

Aqui, sem outro Apolo do que Apolo,
Sem um suspiro abandonemos Cristo
        E a febre de buscarmos
        Um deus dos dualismos.

E longe da cristã sensualidade
Que a casta calma da beleza antiga
        Nos restitua o antigo
        Sentimento da vida.

Voam débeis e enganadas
As folhas que o vento toma.
Bem sei: deitamos os dados
Mas Deus é que deita a soma.

Não a ti, mas aos teus, odeio, Cristo.
Tu não és mais que um deus a mais no eterno
        Pantéon que preside
        À nossa vida incerta.

Nem maior nem menor que os novos deuses,
Tua sombria forma dolorida
        Trouxe algo que faltava
        Ao número dos divos.

Por isso reina a par de outros no Olimpo,
Ou pela triste terra se quiseres
        Vai enxugar o pranto
        Dos humanos que sofrem.

Não venham, porém, estultos teus cultores
Em teu nome vedar o eterno culto
        Das presenças maiores
        E parceiras da tua.

A esses, sim, do âmago eu odeio
Do crente peito, e a esses eu não sigo,
        Supersticiosos leigos
        Na ciência dos deuses.

Ah, aumentai, não combatendo nunca.
Enriquecei o Olimpo, aos deuses dando
        Cada vez maior força
        Plo número maior.

Basta os males que o Fado as Parcas fez
Por seu intuito natural fazerem.
        Nós homens nos façamos
        Unidos pelos deuses.

Em Ceres anoitece.
Nos píncaros ainda
        Faz luz.

Sinto-me tão grande
Nesta hora solene
        E vã

Que, assim como há deuses
Dos campos, das flores
        Das searas,

Agora eu quisera
Que um deus existisse
        De mim.

There lived, I know not when, never perhaps­ -
        But the fact is he lived - an unknown king
Whose kingdom was the strange Kingdom of Gaps.
        He was lord of what is twixt thing and thing,
Of interbeings, of that part of us
        That lies between our waking and our sleep,
                Between our silence and our speech, between
Us and the consciousness of us; and thus
        A strange mute kingdom did that weird king keep
                Sequestered from our thought of time and scene.

Those supreme purposes that never reach
        The deed - between them and the deed undone
He rules uncrowned. He is the mystery which
                Is between eyes and sight, nor blind nor seeing.
        Himself is never ended nor begun,
Above his own void presence empty shelf.
                All He is but a chasm in his own being,
The lidless box holding not‑being's no‑pelf.

All think that he is God, except himself.

Pius, of pious anger full,
In's bull makes priests and men of bias
Spy us. Although Pius is pious,
His bull (if that's a bull) 's a bull.

Pius the Tenth, your letter, bull -
Whate'er it is, with great attention
I read, although 'tis rather dull;
And, to speak true, not to deceive,
These words synthetise the impression
That from your bull I did receive: -

How much of that do you believe?

Kisses on me like dew
        Pour, and it shall be morn
My waked spirit through.
        My bowed, greyed head adorn
With bays, that I may view
        My shadow crowned and smile even as I rnourn

Although my head is bent,
        Thy feet, sandalled with hope,
Pass and are eloquent
         I' th' way they do not stop.
Somewhere i'th' grass they are blent
        With that of me that does for meanings grope

Let us be lovers aye,
        Out of all flesh agreeing,
Lovers in some new way
        That needs not words nor seeing.
Thus abstract, our love may
        Not ours, be but a vague breath of Pure Being

Deixa passar o vento
Sem lhe perguntar nada.
Seu sentido é apenas
Ser o vento que passa…

Consegui que desta hora
O sacrifical fumo
Subisse até ao Olimpo.
E escrevi estes versos
Pra que os deuses voltassem.

The hours are weary of being hours.
        Oh, to be aught else! they say.
Their task's to age children, hopes and flowers,
        Paint lips cold and hairs gray.

They sicken and sadden and deaden beauty.
        When they pass and look behind,
Lining the path of their ended duty
        They only weeping fmd.

So, Oh, to be something else! they say,
        For they think they know
That the things and thoughts they take away
        Really fade and go.

But they do not know, blind misers screening
        A robber‑changed false pelf,
That everything has Another Meaning -
        Ay, even God Himself

Crer é errar. Não crer de nada serve.

Sorrow sits by my side
Fondling my careless hair.
She is the lady of golden
Gestures to silence beholden.
Only she does not deride
My dreams and what makes them fair.

Now she doth cease and whisper
The use of dreams to my soul.
She tells me they mean God's blessing
The spirit's shining releasing
From the world's weight and sister
To life's unchanging whole.

They wear no real greatness who have faith
        In God: or Matter, in Life's In or Out.
Only perpetual doubt is truly great,
        And the pain of perpetual doubt.

Friends, tread in peace, here lies the devil;
The world hath now but little evil.

If I could carve my poems in wood,
By children they would be understood,

So near to the sense things have in God
Are both my poems and children's thought.

For a child knows that logic and meaning
Are only nothing nothing screening,

And a child is one divinely aware
That all things are toys and all things are fair,

That a thimble, a stone and a cotton‑reel
Are things we can quite divinely feel,

And that, if we make men out of those things,
They are really men, not imaginings.

I would therefore l could take my verse
Out of mere ideas and better it worse

To visible carving or drawing or what
My verses could be resembling that.

Then would I be the children's poet,
And, though perhaps I might never know it

With the outer sense that makes life sadder,
In every innocent face made gladder

God would be giving my soul the sense,
Lost back of knowledge, of recompense ­-

The sense of children more children still
When, acting my poems at their glad will,

They, playing with toys, with legs incurled,
Lightly err the visible world.

Even as upon a low and cloud-domed day,
When clouds are one cloud till the horizon.
Our thinking senses deem the sun away
And say «'tis sunless» and «there is no sun»;
And yet the very day they wrong truth by
Is of the unseen sun's effluent essence,
The very words do give themselves the lie,
The very thought of absence comes from presence:
Even so deem we through Good of what is evil.
He speaks of light that speaks of absent light,
And absent god, becoming present devil,
Is still the absent god by essence' right.
The withdrawn cause by being withdrawn doth get
(Being thereby cause still) the denied effect.

I

All things that shine are God's eyes.
        All things that move are God's speech.
        Every thing has all to teach
To our awakening surmise.

Green are God's thoughts when they are leaves,
        Yellow when sunflowers they are.
        Yet they shine separate and far
From the hands wherewith God weaves.

Light are my steps on the ground
        Yet they do echo through space,
        Through terrible abysses that face
God at the side never found.

II

My dreams are angels' kisses.
Lightly they touch my heart,
Tip‑toe shadow caresses.
They are my Godder part.

There is a flower in my hand.
It is not found in fields.
God looks and can understand,
For He is the dreamer who builds.

He knows how dreams are set up,
He knows how flowers are made glad.
Look: I hold up my cup
And God gives me wine to be mad.

Lá vem o homem da capa
Que ninguém sabe quem é...
Se o lenço os olhos te tapa
Vejo os teus olhos por fé.

My thoughts are something my soul fears.
        I tremble at my very glee.
        Sometimes I feel arrive in me
A dim, a cold. a sad, a fierce
        A lust‑like spirituality.

It makes me one with all the grass.
        My life takes colour at all flowers.
The breeze that seemeth loth to pass
        Shakes off red petals from my hours
        And my heart sulters without showers.

Then God becomes a vice of mine
        And divine feelings an embrace
That sinks my senses in its wine
        And leaves no outline in my ways
Of seeing God flower, grow and shine.

My thoughts and feelings mingle and form
        A vague and hot soul‑unity.
Like a sea that expects a storm,
        A lazy ache and fret make me
A murmur like a coming swarm.

My parched thoughts mix and occupy
        Their interpresences and swell
To each others' places. I descry
        Nought in me save impossible
Mixtures of many things all I.

I am a drunkard of my thoughts.
        My feelings' juice o'erruns my soul.
        My will becomes soaked in them all.
Then life stagnates a dream and rots
        To beauty in my verses' dole.

Beside a summer's day
        I lay me down and dreamed.
The light from far away
        In my withinned self gleamed,
An unreal true glow,
Spiritually somehow.

I saw the inner side
        Of summer, earth and morn.
I heard the rivers glide
        From Within. l was borne
To see, through mysteries,
How God everything is.

The motes of sun that dance
        Are audibly whispered.
All is an utterance.
        The sight may hear. I shed
Vision of things as things.
My thoughts are angels' wings.

The corpses of known hours
        In barks unsteered and left
Float, covered with mute flowers,
        Down my dream that is cleft
In banks of mystery ­-
This summer day and I.

And something like a greed
        And yet unlike a wish,
The power to have a need
        Which doth not needing reach,
But is dissolved again
Ere its sad joy reach pain,

A shadowy lightness woven
        Of the day and of me,
Like sparkling water driven
        Never but where we see,
A gap, a pause, a dim
Looking over things' rim,

Starts like a sudden flute
        Pastoral with tuneless notes
Out of the unseen root
        Of all my being denotes,
Spreads, till I feel it not,
O'er my lost sense of thought.

And lo! I am another.
        My senses taste not‑mine.
A hand my sight doth smother
        To a blind sight divine.
I am a lost tune, a mood
Of the finger‑tips of God.

So, like a child‑king crowned,
        I feel new with fear‑pride.
I am robed with sky and ground.
        My inmost soul's outside
Is sunlit seas and lands.
My dreams are seraphs' hands.

God knows. Lie we to sleep
        Contentedly somehow,
Smiling that we did weep,
        As at an overthrow
Of kingdoms the stars, deep
        In silence, smile nor know.

God knows. And an He knew not
        And were not, what of it?
No matter that we do not
        Our life with living fit.
Glad to have sleep and tears,
        Lullaby to our fears!

One day, Time having ceased,
        Our lives shall meet again,
From Place and Name released.
        Only that shall remain
Of each of us that may
Seem natural to that Day.

There we will newly love,
        Wondering at the old mood
With which love did us move,
        When pain and solitude
Were what each soul had got
For its contingent lot.

There, heaven being between us
        And touch a real thing,
The texture luminous
        Of our true lives will bring
God into our love like breath.
Nowhere will there be death.

The need to suffer and sigh,
        The inevitable cares,
The awaiting and the cry
        That goes from joy to tears -
These have no need to be
In love's eternity.

The hours shall make our love
        Grow younger, not more old.
Some trick of time shall move
        Wont even to truer gold,
Regret shall not be aught
Possible there to thought.

That region light‑suspended
        Under truer blue skies
Shall let our souls feel blended,
        Yet be true unities.
Nought shall have power to fret
Our hearts to tire of it.

A golden land where God
        Stayed a Day of His Time,
Not as the world, where not
        A moment did he abide,
And where His passing left
The sense of aught bereft.

My heart, that thinks of this,
        Pines, for it is nowhere,
And she that meets my bliss
        With her new old love there -
She is unreal as all
That to this verse I call.

Yet who knows? Perhaps this
        Is not wishing, but seeing.
Perhaps this love, this bliss,
        This conscious glad not‑being
Is some reality
Through fancy seen by me.

Perhaps it casts a spell
        From where it can be found.
What is impossible?
        Where is God's bourne and bound?
Why, if I dream this, may
Not this be mine one day?

Who knows what our dreams are?
        Who knows all that God makes?
Perhaps life doth but mar
        The immediate truth that takes
Its beauty from being dreamed.
Nothing eter merely seemed.

Somewhere where God is nearer
        These things are een now true.
Oh, let me be no fearer
        That this may not be so!
All is more strange than that
Small glimpse of it we get.

Mine eyes are wild with joy
        Because I have these thoughts.
They cannot tire nor cloy
        Because God ever allots
To each high thing the power
To weigh not on its hour.

My flower garden is
        Full of new flowers now.
My lips are kissed by bliss
        Because I know not how.
My heart fails and I swim
Within a luminous rim.

A halo of hope comes round
        My soul. I am that child
That cries: Lo! I have found
        This flower strange and wild.
The unknown flower I have
Grew on my dead dreams' grave.

A trembling sense of being
        More than my sense can hold,
A bird of feeling seeing
        The great, earth‑hidden gold
Of the approaching dawn,
A breath, a light, a swoon,

A presence interwoven
        With rays of other light,
A spell, a power untroven
        Of my more clear delight,
I faint, I fade, I seem
Myself to be my dream.

And if this be not so,
        Oh, God, make it now be!
Let me not find more woe
        Because I so dreamed Thee!
Let aught for which I pine
Merit being divine.

Let this resemble heaven
        And be my home for e'er,
Even if for e'er mean living
        But this hour really fair.
An hour in God shall be
Enough eternity.

Into a vision before me the world
Flowered, and it as when a flag, unfurled,
Suddenly shows unknown colours and signs.
        Into an unknown meaning, evident
And unknown ever, it outspread its lines
        Of meaning to my passive wonderment.
The outward and the inward became one.
Feelings and thoughts were visible in shapes,
And flowers and trees as feelings, thoughts. Great capes
Stood out of Soul, thrust into conscious seas,
And on all this a man‑sky spoke its breeze.

Each thing was linked into each other thing
By links of being past imagining,
But visible, as if the skeleton
Were visible and the flesh round it, each one
As if a separate thing visibly alone.

There was no difference between a tree
And an idea. Seeing a river be
And the exterior river were one thing.
The bird's soul and the motion of its wing
Were an inextricable oneness made.
And all this I saw, seeing not, dismayed
With the New God this vision told me of;
For this was aught I could not speak nor love
But a new sentiment not like all others,
Nought like the human feelings, men are brothers
In feeling, woke on my astonished spirit.
With a great suddenness did this disinherit
That thought that looks through mine eyes of the pelf
Of ordered seeing that maketh it itself.

O horror set with mad joy to appal!
O self‑transcendency of all!
O inner infinity of each thing, that now
Suddenly was made visible and local, though
No manner of speech to speak these things in words

Followed that vision! Sight whose sense absurds
Likeness of like, and makes disparity
Contiguous innerly to unity!

How to express what, seen, is not expressed
To the struck sight that sees it? How to know
What comes to senses' threshold to bestow
A visible ignorance upon the knowing?
How to obey the analogy‑behest,
Community in unity to prove
The intellectual meaning of to love,
Shipwrecking difference upon the sight
Renewed from God to Inwards infinite?

Nothing: the exterior world inner expressed,
The flower of the whole vision of the world
        Into its colour of absolutely meaning
In the night unfurled,
And therefore nought unfurling, abstract, that,
        Vision self‑screening,
Patent invisible fact.

Nothing: all,
And I centre of to recall,
        As if Seeing were a god.
The rest the presence of to see,
Hollow self‑sensed infinity,
        And all my being‑not‑souled‑to‑oneness trod
To fragments in my sight‑dishevelled sight.

This Night is Light.