Saying Whitman in a Meth Lab

60 years in 60 poems

Knock yourselves out.

Odysseus to Telemachus

My dear Telemachus,
The Trojan War
is over now; I don't recall who won it.
The Greeks, no doubt, for only they would leave
so many dead so far from their own homeland.
But still, my homeward way has proved too long.
While we were wasting time there, old Poseidon,
it almost seems, stretched and extended space.

I don't know where I am or what this place
can be. It would appear some filthy island,
with bushes, buildings, and great grunting pigs.
A garden choked with weeds; some queen or other.
Grass and huge stones . . . Telemachus, my son!
To a wanderer the faces of all islands
resemble one another. And the mind
trips, numbering waves; eyes, sore from sea horizons,
run; and the flesh of water stuffs the ears.
I can't remember how the war came out;
even how old you are--I can't remember.

Grow up, then, my Telemachus, grow strong.
Only the gods know if we'll see each other
again. You've long since ceased to be that babe
before whom I reined in the plowing bullocks.
Had it not been for Palamedes' trick
we two would still be living in one household.
But maybe he was right; away from me
you are quite safe from all Oedipal passions,
and your dreams, my Telemachus, are blameless.

Them and [Uz] de Tony Harrison

Se fundasse uma religião, este seria o Te Deum

Um poema de Anna Akhmátova

Sem casaco, no ar de jasmim/ perco-me caminhando no entardecer/ respirando - ambicioso e vencido a ponto/ de não existir

Ouve.

Wallace Stevens, "Tea at the Palace of Hoon"

Muriel*

*Ou um dos posts que sempre quis fazer. A imagem é, salvo o erro, de In a lonely place de Nicholas Ray.

"Elegy" de Dylan Thomas, por Richard Burton

"Before I knocked" de Dylan Thomas

Leitura de Richard Burton do poema abaixo transcrito. Vale a pena ouvir.

Leda and The Swan, W. B. Yeats (1928)

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,

So mastered by the brute blood of the air
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

«Ithaka» de Konstandinos Kavafis

Qualquer coisa como isto.

Adonic Angela de Pablo Neruda, lido por Willem Dafoe

Legenda: Today I stretched out next/to a pure young woman/as if at the shore of a white ocean,/as if at the centre of a burning star/of slow space.//From her lengthily green gaze/the light fell like dry water,/in transparent and deep circles/of fresh force.//Her bosom like a two flamed fire/burned raised in two regions,/and in a double river reached/her large, clear feet.//A climate of gold scarcely ripened/the diurnal length of her body/filling it with extended fruit/sand hidden fire.//
O poema é lido numa cena de Il Postino (1994).

Ítaca, por Sean Connery

Quase uma curiosidade: o poema «Ítaca» de Konstantinos Kavafis lido por Sean Connery.

Canto V do Inferno, por Roberto Benigni

Parece que em Itália, disseram-me ontem, Benigni enche estádios de futebol... a ler Dante.

Tony Harrison: Long Distance II