Sonhos e Imaginação

Encontrei o segredo, a chave de vidro
das palavras que escrevo, e tenho medo.
Talvez nos campos imensos onde o lírio floresce,
na margem de rio que abriga, de manhã cedo,
os teus pés de ninfa, num engano de idade,
me tenhas visto à sombra de um rochedo,
e se os teus lábios, entreabertos num torpor
de romã, me tocaram num sonho bêbedo,
deles só lembro, imprecisos, fluxos
de incêndio numa hipótese de amor.


Nuno Júdice | "A partilha dos mitos", pág. 46 | Na Regra do Jogo, 1982

os dias sem ninguém
pequeníssimos recados escritos à pressa
amachucados nos dedos

foi bela a madressilva
subindo pela noite da morada esquecida

pedras exactas poeiras perfumadas
bichos de lume dormitando na flexibilidade da argila
areias cobertas de insectos ossos dentes
e o rio por onde partem as noites de cansaço

luminosa floração luas ácidas despenhando-se
fendas de terra cidades costeiras pássaros
frágeis caminhos em pleno voo
durante a lucidez tremenda do sonho

restam-me os corredores de vidro
onde posso afagar os restos carbonizados do corpo
abro a porta que dava acesso ao rosto
desço os degraus musgosos do pátio
atravesso o jardim de alvenaria onde vivi
todo este tempo antes de me precipitar

andamos pelo mundo
experimentando a morte
dos brancos cabelos das palavras
atravessamos a vida com o nome do medo
e o consolo dalgum vinho que nos sustém
a urgência de escrever
não se sabe para quem

o fogo a seiva das plantas eivada de astros
a vida policopiada e distribuída assim
através da língua... gratuitamente
o amargo sabor deste país contaminado
as manchas de tinta na boca ferida dos tigres de papel

enquanto durmo à velocidade dos pipelines
esboço cromos para uma colecção de sonhos lunares
e ao acordar... a incoerente cidade odeia
quem deveria amar

o tempo escoa-se na música silente deste mar
ah meu amigo... como invejo essa tarde de fogo
em que apetecia morrer e voltar

Talvez sejas a breve
recordação de um sonho
de que alguém (talvez tu) acordou
(não o sonho, mas a recordação dele),
um sonho parado de que restam
apenas imagens desfeitas, pressentimentos.
Também eu não me lembro,
também eu estou preso nos meus sentidos
sem poder sair. Se pudesses ouvir,
aqui dentro, o barulho que fazem os meus sentidos,
animais acossados e perdidos
tacteando! Os meus sentidos expulsaram-me de mim,
desamarraram-me de mim e agora
só me lembro pelo lado de fora.

Talvez não seja mais do que o meu sonho...
Esse sorriso será para outro, ou a propósito de outro,
Loura débil...
Esse olhar para mim casual como um calendário...
Esse agradecer-me quando a não deixei cair do eléctrico
Um agradecimento...
Perfeitamente...
Gosto de lhe ouvir em sonho o seguimento que não houve
De coisas que não chegou a haver,
Há gente que nunca é adulta sem [...]!
Creio mesmo que pouca gente chega a ser adulta — pouca —
E a que chega a ser adulta de facto morre sem dar por nada.

Loura débil, figura de inglesa absolutamente portuguesa,
Cada vez que te encontro lembro-me dos versos que esqueci...
É claro que não me importo nada contigo
Nem me lembro de te ter esquecido senão quando te vejo,
Mas o encontrar-te dá som ao dia e ao desleixo
Uma poesia de superfície,
Uma coisa a mais no a menos da improficuidade da vida...
Loura débil, feliz porque não és inteiramente real,
Porque nada que vale a pena ser lembrado é inteiramente real,
E nada que vale a pena ser real vale a pena.

O Íbis, ave do Egipto,
Pousa sempre sobre um pé
        (O que é
        Esquisito).
É uma ave sossegada
Porque assim não anda nada.

Uma cegonha parece
Porque é uma cegonha.
        Sonha
        E esquece —
Propriedade notável
De toda ave aviável.

Quando vejo esta Lisboa,
Digo sempre, Ah quem me dera
        (E essa era
        Boa)
Ser um íbis esquisito,
Ou pelo menos estar no Egipto.

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.

Pia número SEIS,
Para quem se penteia com bolos-reis.

Pia número SETE,
Para quem canta até que o telhado se derrete.

Pia número OITO,
Para quem parte nozes quando é afoito.

Pia número NOVE,
Para quem se parece com uma couve.

Pia número DEZ
Para quem cola selos nas unhas dos pés.

E, como as mãos já não estão frias,
Tampa nas pias!

VIAGEM

Sonhar um sonho é perder outro. Tristonho
Fito a ponte pesada e calma...
Cada sonho é um existir de outro sonho
Ó eterna desterrada em ti própria, ó minha alma!

Sinto em meu corpo mais conscientemente
O rodar estremecido do comboio. Pára?...
Com um como que intento intermitente
De (...) mal-roda, estaca. Numa estação, clara

De realidade e gente e movimento.
Olho p'ra fora... Cesso. Estagno em mim.
Resfolgar da máquina... Carícia de vento
Pela janela que se abre... Estou desatento...
Parar... seguir... parar... Isto é sem fim

Ó o horror da chegada! Ó horror. Ó nunca
chegares, ó ferro em trémulo seguir!
À margem da viagem prossegue... Trunca
A realidade, passa ao lado do ir
E pelo lado interior da Hora
Foge, usa a eternidade, vive...
Sobrevive ao momento (...) vai!
Suavemente... suavemente, mais suavemente e demora
(...) entra na gare... Range-se... estaca... É agora!

Tudo o que fui de sonho, o eu-outro que tive
Resvala-me pela alma... Negro declive
Resvala, some-se, para sempre se esvai
E da minha consciência um Eu que não obtive
Dentro em mim de mim cai.

V

Braços cruzados, sem pensar nem crer,
Fiquemos pois sem mágoas nem desejos.
Deixemos beijos, pois o que são beijos ?
A vida é só o esperar morrer.

Longe da dor e longe do prazer,
Conheçamos no sono os benfazejos
Poderes únicos; sem urzes, brejos,
A sua estrada sabe apetecer.

Coroado de papoilas e trazendo
Artes porque com sono tira sonhos,
Venha Morfeu, que as almas envolvendo,

Faça a felicidade ao mundo vir
Num nada onde sentimo-nos risonhos
Só de sentirmos nada já sentir.

Casa Branca — Barreiro a Moita (Silêncio ou estação, à escolha do freguês)

Toda a gente que tem as mãos frias
Deve metê-las dentro das pias.

Pia número UM,
Para quem mexe as orelhas em jejum.

Pia número DOIS,
Para quem bebe bifes de bois.

Pia número TRÊS,
Para quem espirra só meia vez.

Pia número QUATRO,
Para quem manda as ventas ao teatro.

Pia número CINCO,
Para quem come a chave do trinco.

Pia número SEIS,
Para quem se penteia com bolos-reis.

Pia número SETE,
Para quem canta até que o telhado se derrete.

Pia número OITO,
Para quem parte nozes quando é afoito.

Pia número NOVE,
Para quem se parece com uma couve.

Pia número DEZ,
Para quem cola selos nas unhas dos pés.

E, como as mãos já não estão frias,
Tampa nas pias!

Na quinta que nunca houve
Há um poço que não há
Onde há-de ir encontrar água
Alguém que te entenderá.

IV

Leva me longe, meu suspiro fundo,
Além do que deseja e que começa,
Lá muito longe, onde o viver se esqueça
Das formas metafísicas do mundo.

Aí que o meu sentir vago e profundo
O seu lugar exterior conheça,
Aí durma em fim, aí enfim faleça
O cintilar do espírito fecundo.

Aí... mas de que serve imaginar
Regiões onde o sonho é verdadeiro
Ou terras para o ser atormentar?

É elevar demais a aspiração,
E, falhado esse sonho derradeiro,
Encontrar mais vazio o coração.

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.

Set out from sight of shore!
                Grow tired of every sea!
        All things are ever more
                Than most they seem to be.
What steps are those that pass outside my door?

        Fail out from shape and thought!
                Let sense and feeling fade!
        O sadness overwrought
                With joy till bliss is strayed!
What birds are those that my swift window shade?

        But be those steps no steps,
                And be those birds dreamed wings,
        Still one ache oversteps
                The life to which it clings,
Though to know what ache no step in me helps
And what this pang is no bird in me sings.

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.

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.

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.

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.

O ar do campo vem brando,
Faz sono haver esse ar.
Já não sei se estou sonhando
Nem de que serve sonhar.

I shall not come when thou wilt call,
        For when thou call'st I am with thee.
        When I think of thee, within me
Thyself art, and thy thought self’s all.

Thy presence is thy absence drest
        In thy body that hides thy soul.
Tis in me that thou art possessed,
        'Tis in my thoughts that thou art whole.

Outside thee, given to time and space,
        Thy body, thy mere loss to me,
Partakes of change and age and place?
        Belongs to other laws than thee.

In my dream of thee nothing changes
        Thyself to other than thou art.
        Thy corporal presence is that part
Of thee that thee from thee estranges.

Therefore call me, but await not.
        Thy voice, summed to my dreaming thee,
Shall put new beauty on that thought
        Of thy body that dwells in me.

Thy voice heard from afar shall bring
        Nearer to me thy presence dreamed.
        Brighter and clearer than it seemed
It grow'th in my imagining.

Then call no more. Thy voice twice heard
        Along the real space would be
        Too near now to reality.
Thy second voice were thy first blurred.

Call me but once. I close mine eyes
        And let the second call be dreamed,
        Thy body's vision lightly gleamed
On my seeing memory of thy cries.

The rest, eyes shut lest thou appear.
        Shall be thy clear continuance
        In my dream's constancy askance.
Keep far, keep silent, come not here,

For thou wouldst come too near for sight
        And out of my thoughts step to thee,
        Putting on thy dreamed body in me
        (Thy body's form‑dream infinite)
        Thy limit, visibility.

Dizes-me que nunca sonhas
E que dormes sempre a fio.
Quais são as coisas risonhas
Que sonhas por desfastio?

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.

Durmo, remoto; sonho, diferente,
Meu coração, ansioso e pressuroso,
Foi entalado num comboio entre
Os dois vagões do meu destino ocioso.