Martial Cadenza

Only this evening I saw again low in the sky
The evening star, at the beginning of winter, the star
That in spring will crown every western horizon,
Again... as if it came back, as if life came back,
Not in a later son, a different daughter, another place,
But as if evening found us young, still young,
Still walking in present of our own.

II
It was like sudden time in a world without time,
This world, this place, the street in which I was,
Without time: as that which is not has no time,
Is not, or is of what there was, is full
Of the silence before the armies, armies without
Either trumpets or drums, the commanders mute, the arms
On the ground, fixed fast in a profound defeat.

III
What had this star to do with the world it lit,
Whit the blank skies over England, over France
And above the German camps? It looked apart.
Yet it is this that shall maintain - Itself
Is time, apart from any past, apart
From any future, the ever-living and being,
The ever-breathing and moving, the constant fire,

IV
The present close, the present realized,
Not the symbol but that for which the symbol stands,
The vivid thing in the air that never changes,
Though the air change. Only this evening I saw it again,
At the beginning of winter, and I walked and talked
Again, and lived and was again, and breathed again
And moved again and flashed again, time flashed again.


Wallace Stevens, Antologia, Relógio d'Água, 2005.

Wallace Stevens, "Tea at the Palace of Hoon"

II

The night is of the color
Of a woman's arm:
Night, the female,
Obscure,
Fragrant and supple,
Conceals herself.
A pool shines,
Like a bracelet
Shaken in a dance.

III
I measure myself
Against a tall tree.
I find that I am much taller,
For I reach right up to the sun,
With my eye;
And I reach to the shore of the sea
With my ear.
Neverthless, I dislike
The way ants crawl
In and out of my shadow.

IV

When my dream was near the moon,
The white folds of its grown
Filled with yellow light.
The soles of its feet
Grew red.
Its hair filled
With certain blue crystallizations
From stars,
Not far off.

Wallace Stevens, Ficção Suprema: Poemas, Luísa Maria Campos (tradução e prefácio), Assírio & Alvim, 1991.

VI

Rationalists, wearing square hats,
Think, in square rooms,
Looking at the floor,
Looking at the ceiling.
They confine themselves
To right-angled triangles.
If they tried rhomboids,
Cones, waving lines, ellipses -
As for exemple, the ellipse of the half-moon -
Rationalists would wear sombreros.

Wallace Stevens, Ficção Suprema: Poemas, Luísa Maria Campos (tradução e prefácio), Assírio & Alvim, 1991.

Theory

I am what is around me.

Women understand this.
One is not duchess
A hundred yards from a carriage.
These, then, are portraits:
A black vestibule;
A high bed sheltered by curtains.

These are merely instances.

Wallace Stevens, Ficção Suprema: Poemas, Luísa Maria Campos (tradução e prefácio), Assírio & Alvim, 1991.

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bareplace

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Wallace Stevens, Ficção Suprema: Poemas, Luísa Maria Campos (tradução e prefácio), Assírio & Alvim, 1991.