Chicago - Sufjan Stevens

Lady - Chromatics

Feliz Natal

Imagine striking a match that night in the cave:
use the cracks in the floor to feel the cold.
Use crockery in order to feel the hunger.
And to feel the desert - but the desert is everywhere.
Imagine striking a match in that midnight cave,
the fire, the farm beasts in outline, the farm tools and stuff;
and imagine, as you towel your face in the towel's folds,
the bundled up Infant. And Mary and Joseph.
Imagine the kings, the caravans' stilted procession
as they make for the cave, or rather three beams closing in
and in on the star; the creaking of loads, the clink of a cowbell;
(but in the cerulean thickening over the Infant
no bell and no echo of bell: He hasn't earned it yet.)
Imagine the Lord, for the first time, from darkness, and stranded
immensely in distance, recognising Himself in the Son,
of Man: homeless, going out to Himself in a homeless one.

De Nativity Poems por Joseph Brodsky, publicado por by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001, traduzido por Seamus Heaney

Rebelião

Um poema de Jorge Roque

Quero que se foda o sublime. A minuciosa construção do absoluto literário. Assim sem emendas e em rigoroso vernáculo, parece-me mais exacto. Quero que se foda o sublime (desculpem-me a repetição). Prefiro portas fechadas, casas destruídas, chaves de pouco ou nenhum uso para gestos de pouca ou nenhuma glória que são o absoluto onde me posso sentar para beber mais um copo deste vinho que te pinta os lábios e te acende nos olhos esse fulgor de luz, esse pulsar de salto, onde me lanço para voltar ou não voltar, mas ter cumprido do sangue o impulso. Quero que se foda o sublime (começa a saber-me bem repeti-lo, o ritmo sincopado conjugado com a limpidez expressiva). Estou a falar contigo, a viver contigo, a morrer contigo. Estou a dizer-te ama comigo, sofre comigo, morre comigo um pouco mais devagar.

in Canção da Vida, Averno, 2012

COL DE PEYRESOURDE - Hugo Milhanas Machado

No dia em que te toquei a trança

tempo tive de ficar de frio na janela

o leite derramava na cozinha

ia muito devagarinho e descia

desenhava um nome no chão

Pensar em ti era só pensar em campeões

ou como fiz ir dentro ver o Tour de França

eu que gostei de ti no dia em que te toquei a trança

e só ficou a marca de leite na planta do pé

as letras brancas e inclinadas nas estradas

 As Junções, Lisboa: Artefacto, 2010. 

Que coisas selvagens...

Um poema de José Tolentino Mendonça

Os Justos

Começam o dia louvando o imperfeito
O tempo que se inclina para o lado partido
as escassas laranjas que se tornam
amarelas no meio da palha
as talhas sem vinho

Olham por dentro a brancura da manhã
e em tudo quanto auxilia um homem no seu ofício
louvam o vulnerável e o inacabado

Estão sentados à soleira dos espaços
trabalhados devagar pelo silêncio

Quando Deus voltar
não terá de arrombar todas as portas

in Estação Central, Assírio & Alvim, 2012.

Lançamento do livro Dias de Tempestade - José Duarte

Convite para o lançamento do meu novo livro
Dias de Tempestade 

Father John Misty - Hollyood Forever Cemetery

Dias de Tempestade

Dias de Tempestade

Edição de autor, 96 páginas.

Design de Sara Didelet

O lançamento está para breve. Este livro já pode ser adquirido via mail. 

O preço de venda é 10 euros (mais portes de envio, caso o livro seja enviado por correio).

Lisboa

Cais das Colunas, Eduardo Gageiro, 1973

All that I wanted - David Fonseca

The Morning Benders - Excuses

Shanon Wright - Avalanche

In a Station of a Metro - Dan Beachy-Quick

Peace fell on the dim lands a sort of abstraction

The metronome counted one petal after another

So the petals fell as or in some music

This song needs no breath just an apparition

With a mouth open and eyes and eyes

The wet smear of eyes beneath pink

Petals in excess of the window frame’s bright

Yellow square and yes spring gathers right now

The moisture from my breath up into clouds

Whose downpour makes of the plum tree in blossom

A diminishing crowd for which the natural symbol

Refuses to exist a plain blue gem on a pin

Faces glowing within the stone like flowers

Within the stone like flaws the mind turns inward

Turns inward its tangle of wet black boughs

A knot pulled tight so tight it ceases to be

A knot yes I’ll say it a knot that becomes angelic

Another example everywhere seen of the angelic

Gears toothless and without cogs a sort of mist

That turns the other gear by drifting through it

As just now through my eye drifts that storm

Battered tree whose broken-petal pocked bark

Asks of me a question my mouth can’t speak

Like a river that dives underground just there

There where the animals thirst the most

A desert fox say or say a toad or let’s speak more simply

About a plum which bursts through its own explosion

Into being and hangs there so ponderously

As if as if not concerned with innocence or

Gravity or other acute angles as they evaporate

Into this poem O no am I speaking again again about

dim lands these dim dim lands of of peace

Source: Poetry (December 2011).

Mais aqui.

Ps(alm) for Awful - Laynie Browne

Now returned from

a place of careful speech

to a place of no speech at all

She said, push him off a mountain

never again

something about voice



The town has no skirts

out



A better reply

than to tell the truth

or to lie

something that reveals neither false construction



Stop dreaming someone hates you

(and how to love other fundamental problems)



To write what will never be read

for this each notebook was made



I am in a primordial place

not feeling primordial

not arisen



I can still trust curiosities

pictures of forsaken sky

text as trust and texture

awnings of inevitable leverage



Beneath the land lies

a remote glance



The book of last dresses

the book of oceanic curls

the book of blue

Mais aqui.

Um poema de Daniel Jonas

ELEMENTÁRIO

O verdadeiro sentido das palavras
é que o poema consiste
em falar do que não pode ser dito a quem
se quer dizer

ou o verdadeiro sentido das palavras
é que o poema consiste
em não falar do que pode ser dito a quem
se quer dizer

ou o verdadeiro sentido das palavras
é que o poema consiste
em não falar do que não pode ser dito a quem
se quer dizer

ou o verdadeiro sentido das palavras
é que o poema consiste
em falar do que pode ser dito a quem
se não quer dizer

isto, claro, partindo do princípio
de que há um sentido das palavras,
verdadeiro, um poema e um
a quem se queira dizer.

Daniel Jonas

Beirut - Postcards from Italy

THE LISTENER - John Burnside

Luke 11: 6

It’s nightfall again on our hill.
Headlamps and spots of gold
in the middle distance;
sculleries; pig sheds; a bedroom above a yard
where someone is lulling an only child
to sleep.
I’ve been on this road since morning,
the land gone from green through grey
to a soft, damp bronze
around me till, a mile or so from home,
I come to the usual
gloaming: an almost white
against the almost black
of gorse and may.
Summer now: an older mode of sleep;
and this, the running dream that follows stone
and fence wire, digging in
for what remains of snow-melt and the last
good rain, the low road
peopled with bone-white figures: not
the living, in this aftermath of grass,
and not the dead we mourn, in empty kirks
or quiet kitchens, halfway through the day,
but something like the absence of ourselves
from our own lives,
some other luck
that would not lead
to now.
Along the coast, it’s still
from field to field,
the living asleep or awake
in the quick of their beds,
hard-wired with love
and salt-sweet from the darkness,
the long-dead blanking the roads
and everything
disloyal to the earth
it came from, streaks and nubs
of grief pooled in the dark
and stitched with strictest
pleasure at the core: that cunning
relish for the irremediable.
There’s nothing so final as want
on a summer’s night,
and few things so tender or sure
as a knock at the door
and nobody starting awake
in the knit and tear
of buried rooms, where mice breed
in their millions, spilling loose
through ruptured drains
and root-bins, nightlong squeals
that run beneath the stillness, like the stains
of manganese and nickel in a wall
where ancient conversations turn to hair
and plaster: uncles
calling from the sway
of grammar
and a cousin twice-removed
reciting what she knows of saints and stars
for no one but herself,
resigned to live
forever, on the promises she kept
and paid for,
in a cradle
of thin air.

John Burnside, from here.

The XX - Chained

A poem by Joshua Marie Wilkinson

A Song Called Theodicy

   after Cyrus Console

Why violence likes to get

unconcealed occasionally,

nightlong, & break some vessels.

You mean, the long drawn‐out

second take of the tunnel scene?

Or the scene where a child’s

encounter on the film set 

gets everybody behind

the camera to crying?

That’s not the wound

we thought long for—

Nor even the one we knew

we might have to defend.

The coils of the springs

of the theodicy of being.

Because evil’s a bad measure

of what’s happened here

& even violence can sound

pretty easy in the right mouth.

Joshua Marie Wilkinson’s recent and forthcoming books are Selenography(Sidebrow 2010), Swamp Isthmus (Black Ocean 2013), and The Courier’s Archive & Hymnal (Sidebrow 2014). Born and raised in Seattle, he lives in Tucson, where he teaches at the University of Arizona and works as an editor for Letter Machine Editions and the poetry/poetics site The Volta. More information here.

Foram Breves e Medonhas Noites de Amor - Al Berto

foram breves e medonhas as noites de amor 
e regressar do âmago delas esfiapava-lhe o corpo 
habitado ainda por flutuantes mãos 

estava nu 
sem água e sem luz que lhe mostrasse como era 
ou como poderia construir a perfeição 

os dias foram-se sumindo cor de chumbo 
na procura incessante doutra amizade 
que lhe prolongasse a vida 

e uma vez acordou 
caminhou lentamente por cima da idade 
tão longe quanto pôde 
onde era possível inventar outra infância 
que não lhe ferisse o coração 

in O Medo, Assírio & Alvim, 2000

David Fonseca - 'Kiss Me, Oh Kiss Me'

Regras

o homem corre em direcção à mulher num último esforço para a alcançar, enquanto um outro grupo de homens o persegue. ele corre com todas as suas forças tentando desesperadamente fugir para abraçar a mulher. a mulher chora e, entre soluços, chama pelo seu nome. os homens apontam as pistolas, mas falham o alvo. alguns chegam a hesitar o disparo: as balas já são tão poucas.

ao correr em desespero o homem perde um dos sapatos, tropeça, cai e volta a levantar-se rapidamente, com uma agilidade que não conhecia em si próprio. depois de muito esforço consegue, finalmente, chegar à mulher que o abraça com toda a força do mundo. ele beija-a. um tiro ecoa ao longo da rua. um dos homens mantém a expressão dura, o fumo da pistola a serpentear-lhe por entre os olhos. manteve-se assim durante algum tempo antes de dar um segundo tiro. afinal de contas a guerra tem regras. 

de José Duarte, 'Regras', de Heartbreak Hotel, a sair um dia destes.

Little Things - Raymond Carver

Early that day the weather turned and the snow was melting into dirty water. Streaks of it ran down from the little shoulder-high window that faced the backyard. Cars slushed by on the street outside, where it was getting dark. But it was getting dark on the inside too.

He was in the bedroom pushing clothes into a suitcase when she came to the door.

I'm glad you're leaving! I'm glad you're leaving! she said. Do you hear?

He kept on putting his things into the suitcase.

Son of a bitch! I'm so glad you're leaving! She began to cry. You can't even look me in the face, can you?

Then she noticed the baby's picture on the bed and picked it up.

He looked at her and she wiped her eyes and stared at him before turning and going back to the living room.

Bring that back, he said.

Just get your things and get out, she said.

He did not answer. He fastened the suitcase, put on his coat, looked around the bedroom before turning off the light. Then he went out to the living room.

She stood in the doorway of the little kitchen, holding the baby.

I want the baby, he said.

Are you crazy?

No, but I want the baby. I'll get someone to come by for his things.

You're not touching this baby, she said.

The baby had begun to cry and she uncovered the blanket from around his head.

Oh, oh, she said, looking at the baby.

He moved toward her.

For God's sake! she said. She took a step back into the kitchen.

I want the baby.

Get out of here!

She turned and tried to hold the baby over in a corner behind the stove.

But he came up. He reached across the stove and tightened his hands on the baby.

Let go of him, he said.

Get away, get away! she cried.

The baby was red-faced and screaming. In the scuffle they knocked down a flowerpot that hung behind the stove.

He crowded her into the wall then, trying to break her grip. He held on to the baby and pushed with all his weight.

Let go of him, he said.

Don't, she said. You're hurting the baby, she said.

I'm not hurting the baby, he said.

The kitchen window gave no light. In the near-dark he worked on her fisted fingers with one hand and with the other hand he gripped the screaming baby up under an arm near the shoulder.

She felt her fingers being forced open. She felt the baby going from her.

No! she screamed just as her hands came loose.

She would have it, this baby. She grabbed for the baby's other arm. She caught the baby around the wrist and leaned back.

But he would not let go. He felt the baby slipping out of his hands and he pulled back very hard.

In this manner, the issue was decided.

"Little Things" from Where I'm Calling From: The Selected Stories Atlantic Monthly Press, 1988. Copyright © 1988 by Tess Gallagher. Retirado daqui.

Diane Arbus - The Wonderful Wizard of Odds

Diane Arbus, "Jewish Giant at Home with His Parents in the Bronx" (1970)

"Na fotografia 'A Jewish giant at home with his parents in the Bronx', (N.Y., 1970,) o corpo do gigante aparece fora das proporções da mobília e do espaço. A sua difícil situação é demarcada pela banalidade do contexto (característica de quase todas as fotografias de Diane Arbus, na maior parte o background está ausente ou é o mais banal possível). A sua casa contrasta com a sua grandiosidade, ele é um freak porque não há espaço que consiga acomodar o seu grande corpo, um ponto que é enfatizado pelo facto de estar na sua própria casa. Contudo, perante a sua gigantesca figura, quem parece ser freak são os seus pais. A sua “freakishness”, tal como é representada na fotografia, é de uma ordem diferente, pois anuncia a dor e a solidão que resultam de uma incongruência entre o seu corpo e aquilo que intimamente o rodeia."

.

David Harsent - From Legion

There was a man who made toffee; he would leave it to cool
on a blue-veined marble slab by the open window
of his shop, which was little more than a tin-and-timber lean-to
in the Street of Songs. There was a man who made small
animals and the like — horses, mostly — from scraps of steel
the plough turned up: high-grade stuff he could fine-tool;
while he worked he would sing, as if he had someone to sing to.
There was a man who made paintings: portraits, as a rule,
of business-men in their best; though he made one, once, of a fool
wearing a crown of stars and pissing a bright arc, while behind him
the Devil herded souls through a vesica piscis, its holy seal
ruptured. I thought that if I could find him,
or one of the other two, or any in that street, I might know
what became of my house and those in it; and what to do; and where to go.

Legion, Faber & Faber, 2005.