The Storm

Miles off, a storm breaks. It ripples to our room.
You look up into the light so it catches one side
Of your face, your tight mouth, your startled eye.
You turn to me and when I call you come
Over and kneel beside me, wanting me to take
Your head between my hands as if it were
A delicate bowl that the storm might break.
You want me to get between you and the brute thunder.
Settling on your flesh my great hands stir,
Pulse on you and then, wondering how to do it, grip.
The storm rolls through me as your mouth opens.

Ian Hamilton, Cinquenta Poemas, Nuno Vidal (Trad.), Livros Cotovia, 1995.

Este livro ficou esquecido na minha mesa de trabalho, como hoje não é dia de trabalhar na biblioteca, torno a encontrá-lo onde o deixei, ou seja entre o Thomas Bernhard e o Le Grand Bailly (Dictionnaire de Grec-Français). Vou arrumá-lo na estante, mas antes disso torno a folheá-lo.

The Visit

They've let me walk with you
As far as this high wall. The placid smiles
Of our new friends, the old incurables,
Pursue us lovingly.
Their boyish, suntanned heads,
Their ancient arms
Outstretched, belong to you.

Although your head still burns
Your hands remember me.

Ian Hamilton, Cinquenta Poemas, Nuno Vidal (Trad.), Livros Cotovia, 1995.

The Recruits

"Nothing moves," you say, and stare across the lawn.
"The sun is everywhere. There will be no breeze."
Birds line the gutters, and from our window
We see cats file across five gardens
To the shade and stand there, watching the sky.
You cry again: "They know."
The dead flies pile up on the window sill.
You shudder as the silence darkens, till
It's perfect night in you. And then you scream.

Ian Hamilton, Cinquenta Poemas, Nuno Vidal (Trad.), Livros Cotovia, 1995.

Remember this

You won't remember this, but I will:
A gradually tightening avenue of trees
And where it locks
What seems from here the most yearningly delicate
Intrusion of white leaves
May yet blacken the unclouded pool of sun
That summons you.
......................................Keep going
Even though I mean to stay; keep going
Even though I can't any more imagine
What I'll find most hard to bear
On the way back from here,
On the way home
To where we first vowed we'd try again to say:
You won't remember this.

Ian Hamilton, Cinquenta Poemas, Nuno Vidal (Trad.), Livros Cotovia, 1995.

Midwinter

Entranced, you turn again and over there
It is white also. Rectangular white lawns
For miles, white walls between them. Snow.
You close your eyes. The terrible changes.

White movements in the corner of your room.
Between your hands, the flowers of your quilt
Are stormed. Dark shadow smudge
Their faded, impossible colours, but won't settle.

You can hear the ice take hold.
Along the street
The yellow drifts, cleansed by a minute's fall,
Wait to be fouled again. Your final breath
Is in the air, pure white, and moving fast.

Ian Hamilton, Cinquenta Poemas, Nuno Vidal (Trad.), Livros Cotovia, 1995.

Robert Frost

As Ian Hamilton explains in his introduction, Robert Frost has been underrated by being over-simplified and over praised. Perceived as a plain-dealing (he was even sent by John F. Kennedy to Russia as an ambassador), kindly, rural man who spent his time mending walls, mowing or apple-picking, he became America's unofficial poet laureate.

(da contracapa de Robert Frost, Selected Poems, Ian Hamilton (ed.), Penguin Books, 1973)