Der Kuss by Gustav Klimt
Poem in Three Parts
By John Ashbery
1. Love
“Once I let a guy blow me.
I kind of backed away from the experience.
Now years later, I think of it
Without emotion. There has been no desire to repeat,
No hang-ups either. Probably if the circumstances were right
It could happen again, but I don’t know,
I just have other things to think about,
More important things. Who goes to bed with what
Is unimportant. Feelings are important.
Mostly I think of feelings, they fill up my life
Like the wind, like tumbling clouds
In a sky full of clouds, clouds upon clouds.”
Nameless shrubs running across a field
That didn't drain last year and
Isn't draining this year to fall short
Like waves at the end of a lake,
Each with a little sigh,
Are you sure this is what the pure day
With its standing light intends?
There are so many different jobs:
It's sufficient to choose one, or a fraction of one.
Days will be blue elsewhere with their own purpose.
One must bear in mind one thing.
It isn't necessary to know what that thing is.
All things are papable, none are known.
The day fries, with a fine conscience,
Shadows, ripples, underbrush, old cars.
The conscience is to you as what is known,
The unknown gets to be known.
Familiar things seem a long way off.
2. Courage
In a diamond-paned checked shirt
to be setting out this way:
A blah morning
Not too far from home (home
Is a modest one-bedroom apartment,
City-owned and operated),
The average debris of the journey
Less than at first thought,
Smell of open water,
Troughs, special pits.
It all winds back again
In time for evening's torque:
So much we could have done,
So much we did do.
Weeds like skyscrapers against the blue vault of heaven:
Where it it to end? What is this? Who are these people?
Am I myself, or a talking tree?
3. I love the Sea
There is no promise but lots
Of intimacy the way yellowed land narrows together.
This part isn't very popular
For some reason: the houses need repairs,
The cars in the yards are too new.
The enclosing slopes dream and are forgetful.
There are joyous, warm patches
Amid nondescript trees.
My dream gets obtuse:
When I woke up this morning I noticed first
That you weren't there, then prodded
Slowly back into the dream:
These trains, people, beaches, rides
In happiness because their variety
Is outlived but still there, outside somewhere,
In the side yard, maybe.
Ivy is blanketing one whole wall.
The time is darker
For fast reasons into everything, about what concerns it now.
We could sleep together again but that wouldn't
Bring back the profit of these dangerous dreams of the sea.
All that crashing, that blindness, that blood
One associates with other days near the sea
Although it persists, like the blindness of noon.
On Board Ship
By Constantine P. Cavafy
It's like him, of course,
this little pencil portrait.
Hurriedly sketched, on the ship's deck,
the afternoon magical,
the Ionian Sea around us.
It's like him. But I remember him as better looking.
He was almost pathologically sensitive,
and this highlighted his expression.
He appears to me better looking
now that my soul brings him back, out of Time.
Out Of Time. All these things are very old-
the sketch, the ship, the afternoon.
The Afternoon Sun
By Constantine P. Cavafy
This room, how well I know it.
Now they're renting it, and the one next to it,
as offices. The whole house has become
an office building for agents, businessmen, companies.
This room, how familiar it is.
The couch was here, near the door,
a Turkish carpet in front of it.
Close by, the shelf with two yellow vases.
On the right -no, opposite- a wardrobe with a mirror.
In the middle the table where he wrote,
and the three big wicker chairs.
Beside the window the bed
where we made love so many times.
They must still be around somewhere, those old things.
Beside the window the bed;
the afternoon sun used to touch half of it.. . .
One afternoon at four o'clock we separated
for a week only . . . And then-
that week became forever.
To Call Up The Shades
By Constantine P. Cavafy
One candle is enough. Its gentle light
will be more suitable, will be more gracious
when the Shades come, the Shades of Love.
One candle is enough.
Tonight the room should not have too much light.
In deep reverie, all receptiveness, and with the gentle light-
in this deep reverie I'll form visions
to call up the Shades, the Shades of Love.
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
By e.e.cummings
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate, my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
love is more thicker than forget
By e.e.cummings
love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail
it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea
love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive
it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky
Há Palavras que Nos Beijam
(Alexandre O'Neill)
Há palavras que nos beijam
Como se tivessem boca.
Palavras de amor, de esperança,
De imenso amor, de esperança louca.
Palavras nuas que beijas
Quando a noite perde o rosto;
Palavras que se recusam
Aos muros do teu desgosto.
De repente coloridas
Entre palavras sem cor,
Esperadas inesperadas
Como a poesia ou o amor.
(O nome de quem se ama
Letra a letra revelado
No mármore distraído
No papel abandonado)
Palavras que nos transportam
Aonde a noite é mais forte,
Ao silêncio dos amantes
Abraçados contra a morte.
“Conheço o sal da tua pele seca...”
(Jorge de Sena)
Conheço o sal da tua pele seca
depois que o estio se volveu inverno
da carne repousada em suor noturno.
Conheço o sal do leite que bebemos
quando das bocas se estreitavam lábios
e o coração no sexo palpitava.
Conheço o sal dos teus cabelos negros
ou louros ou cinzentos que se enrolam
neste dormir de brilhos azulados.
Conheço o sal que resta em minhas mãos
como nas praias o perfume fica
quando a maré desceu e se retrai.
Conheço o sal da tua boca, o sal
da tua língua, o sal de teus mamilos,
e o da cintura se encurvando de ancas.
A todo o sal conheço que é só teu,
ou é de mim em ti, ou é de ti em mim,
um cristalino pó de amantes enlaçados.
— Madrid, 16.01.1973
A tua voz fala amorosa
(Fernando Pessoa)
A tua voz fala amorosa...
Tão meiga fala que me esquece
Que é falsa a sua branda prosa.
Meu coração desentristece.
Sim, como a música sugere
O que na música não está,
Meu coração nada mais quer
Que a melodia que em ti há...
Amar-me? Quem o crera? Fala
Na mesma voz que nada diz
Se és uma música que embala.
Eu ouço, ignoro, e sou feliz.
Nem há felicidade falsa,
Enquanto dura é verdadeira.
Que importa o que a verdade exalça
Se sou feliz desta maneira?
— 22.01.1929
