Descer à terra

Caravaggio, Annunciazione, 1608 (pormenor).

βῆ δὲ κατ᾽ Οὐλύμποιο καρήνων χωόμενος κῆρ,
τόξ᾽ ὤμοισιν ἔχων ἀμφηρεφέα τε φαρέτρην:
ἔκλαγξαν δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ὀϊστοὶ ἐπ᾽ ὤμων χωομένοιο,
αὐτοῦ κινηθέντος: ὃ δ᾽ ἤϊε νυκτὶ ἐοικώς.
ἕζετ᾽ ἔπειτ᾽ ἀπάνευθε νεῶν, μετὰ δ᾽ ἰὸν ἕηκε:
δεινὴ δὲ κλαγγὴ γένετ᾽ ἀργυρέοιο βιοῖο:
οὐρῆας μὲν πρῶτον ἐπῴχετο καὶ κύνας ἀργούς,
αὐτὰρ ἔπειτ᾽ αὐτοῖσι βέλος ἐχεπευκὲς ἐφιεὶς
βάλλ᾽: αἰεὶ δὲ πυραὶ νεκύων καίοντο θαμειαί.

Down he strode from Olympus' peaks, storming at heart
with his bow and hooded quiver slung across his shoulders.
The arrows clanged at his back as the god quaked with rage,
the god himself on the march and down he came like night.
Over against the ships he dropped to a knee, let fly a shaft
and a terrifying clash rang out from the great silver bow.
First he went for the mules and circling dogs but then,
launching a piercing shaft at the men themselves,
he cut them down in droves—
and the corpse‑fires burned on, night and day, no end in sight.

Homero, Il. 1.44 f., Robert Faggles (trad.)

Gabriel descend
as a mood almost
a monody
of chloroform
or florists roses
consensual angel spinning his words
thread
he descends
and light
sensitive darkness
follows him down

Geoffrey Hill, de Psalms of Assize

X

No, not wrong bride, wrong was the first thought of.
Comedy's plight ready to corpse unbidden.
Scope for tragic himmelfarb, things by Fordie
(Take The Good Soldier),

Meredith's prized watchmaker's monocle. True,
This is but how comedy piques narration;
Noble lives pre-eminently disordered.
How do you read me?

So far so granting, as finesse of prankdom,
Incompatibilities new devoted;
Gifts declaimed here, taxing prorata nuptials,
Virginal, blindly.

Failing true faith yet one may have contrition
It is your face, none other self about me;
Something registered in imagination
Factored by edits.

How that helm heatstruck shall appear shade-wrangled;
Stay so ringdove; croon the horizon vaguer.
Lyric extase traded agains possessing.
Spare me prediction;

Spare me long lifestyles of ungrieving godheads;
Eros no blessing nor the masque of Iris.
Where as time shakes down clarimote and sunfleck
Choose to be lucky.

Geoffrey Hill, Odi Barbare: The Daybooks II, Clutag Press, Thame, Oxford, 2012.

LII

Not faced death, not been there, not done with dying
Proven things made salvageable like collage;
Work that takes intelligent patience, but no
Time now for patience.

Nor Cassandra's only but Laocoon's
Bawling struck Troy barely retaining reason;
Stranded dead-pregnant in the ranks of civics'
Obdurate clangour.

Any fragment serves for a token fragment.
Fix the new day squaring a cut-price flamen.
Nothing made so clear per amica - EI! - si -
Lentia lunae.

Time and crosswords, both, yield us topless towers.
Much have pondered, even considered saying.
Always some things human demand of us in-
Human poetics.

Set up quack's hurdles for ourselves. Does that reft
Oak, at last, gaft something to dying? Tolstoy's
Kind of gnomic questioning affirmation
Like in a long film

That, I think, went on for too long. I woke up
During battles. Tell me a mystery, a
Tale of winter, so I shall love you wisely.
Wisdom is fable.

Geoffrey Hill, Odi Barbare: The Daybooks II, Clutag Press, Thame, Oxford, 2012.

As a hedgehog

[Geoffrey] Hill was breathtakingly shy, nearly as shy as a hedgehog—formality and bluster were his protections against the world. We attended three or four of his lectures, which were grave, learned, delivered as if composed of death notices—they were also ponderously slow. (By the end of a series of lectures, only a few true believers were left in the hall.) His method, which did not endear him to students, revealed the pressure of learning within, while tending to hide the grace. Indeed, that seemed part of the poet’s character—he was not an example of grace under pressure, but of pressure under grace.

William Logan, in "Remembering the Courtly Jester", aqui.

Miguel, levamos os pompons?

Coplas

i

"Ninguém pode perder o que não possui"
Que se lixe essa gema abrasiva.
Eu posso perder o que quero. Eu quero-te.

ii

Minha querida, hei-de lamentar-te
para o resto da vida com ligeira
variação de cadência, minha querida.

iii

Meio-escarnecendo a meia-verdade, noto
«A brevidade feroz do amor sensual»
Sinto-me abalado, até por isso.

iv

É para ele que escrevo, para ela
que falo em contido silêncio. Entre eles
Serão tocados pela paixão que não lhes é familiar?


Geoffrey Hill, Selected Poems, Penguin Books, 2006. Versão Minha

4.

Deixa a mente ser mais preciosa do que a alma; não
Perdurará. A alma compreende o seu preço, implora a própria paz,
Resolve-se em lágrimas e suor, é possivelmente
Indestructível. Posso acreditar nisso.
Ainda que desprezasse o simples instinto de fé,
O expediente da concórdia, se me atrevesse,
Aquilo a que não me atrevo é um desperdício de história
ou governo vazio. Averróis, velho pagão,
Se ao menos tivesses acertado, se por si só Intelecto
Fosse lei absoluta, graça que bastasse,
As nossas vidas podiam ser um mito de cativeiro
Em que podíamos entrar: despovoada região
De neve sempre de novo caída, palácio brilhando
De perpétuo silêncio como de tochas.

Geoffrey Hill, Selected Poems, Penguin Books, 2006. Versão minha.

Respublica

The strident high
civic trumpeting
of misrule. It is
what we stand for.

Wild insolence,
aggregates without
distinction. Courage
of common men:

spent in the ruck
their remnant witness
after centuries
is granted them

like a pardon.
And other fealties
other fortitudes
broken as named -

Respublica
brokenly recalled,
is archaic laws
and hymnody;

and destroyed hope
that so many times
is brought with triumph
back from the dead.

Geoffrey Hill, Selected Poems, Penguin Books, 2006

The Jumping Boy - I

Here is the jumping boy, the boy
who jumps as I speak.

He is at home on the king's highway,
in call of the tall house, its blind
gable end, the trees - I know this place.

The road on broad contourings drawn out of sight,
stops - wherever - but not at Lyonesse,
though from Lyonesse I shall bring you,

through grimmed orchards, across gorse-hummocked
old common had everywhere given back
to the future of memory.

Geoffrey Hill, Selected Poems, Penguin Books, 2006

VI

Between bay window and hedge the impenetrable holly
srikes up again taut wintry vibrations.
The hellebore is there still,
half-buried; the crocuses are surviving.
From the front room I might be able to see
the coal fire's image planted in a circle
of cut-back rose bushes. Nothing is changed
by the strenght of this reflections.

Geoffrey Hill, Selected Poems, Penguin Books, 2006

A sad and angry consolation

[...] I ask you:
what are poems for? They are to console us
with their own gift, which is like perfect pitch.
Let us commit that to our dust. What
ought a poem to be? Answer, a sad
and angry consolation. What is
the poem? What figures? Say,
a sad and angry consolation. That's
beautiful. Once more? A sad and angry
consolation.

De "The Triumph of Love CXLVIII"

Geoffrey Hill, Selected Poems, Penguin Books, 2006

From Psalms of Assize

I

Hinc vagantur in tenebris misere, quia non credunt veritati ipsi...
Querunt lumen confisi ipsis et non inueniunt.

Why should I strike you with my name
why made impress of proud wounds
come now belated
patrons of wrath
anxieties are not rectitudes
holiness itself falls
to unholy rejoicing
to ressurect the dead
myth
of our salvation
blasphemies no less
mercies
let us pray
Gabriel descend
as a mood almost
a monody
of chloroform
or florists roses
consensual angel spinning his words
thread
he descends
and light
sensitive darkness
follows him down

Geoffrey Hill, Selected Poems, Penguin Books, 2006

from The Songbook of Sebastian Arrurruz

I

Ten years without you. For so it happens.
Days make their steady progress, a routine
That is merciful and attracts nobody.

Already, like a disciplined scholar,
I piece fragments together, past conjecture
Establishing true sequences of pain;

For so it is proper to find value
In a bleak skill, as in the thing restored:
The long lost words of choice and valediction.

Geoffrey Hill, Selected Poems, Penguin Books, 2006

De "The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Péguy"

...Must men stand by what they write
as by their camp-beds or their weaponry
or shell-shocked comrades while they sag and cry?

Geoffrey Hill, Selected Poems, Penguin Books, 2006

A song from Armenia

Roughly-silvered leaves that are the snow
On Ararat seen through those leaves.
The sun lays down a foliage of shade.

A drinking-fountain pulses its head
Two or three inches from the troughed stone.
An old woman sucks there, gripping the rim.

Why do I have to relive, even now,
Your mouth, and your hand running over me
Deft as a lizzard, like a sinew of water?

Geoffrey Hill, Selected Poems, Penguin Books, 2006

De "Coplas"

I

'One cannot lose what one has not possessed.'
So much for that abrasive gem.
I can lose what I want. I want you.

Geoffrey Hill, Selected Poems, Penguin Books, 2006

O que há de maravilhoso nestes três versos é o negar dessa reserva mental que entre o desejo e o seu objecto impõe uma falha que é um modo de não se dar totalmente. Nesse sentido, uma coisa que se parece com este poema é a final de Roland Garros ontem. Nadal, para mim, é o tenista por excelência do 'One cannot lose what one has not possessed.' Isto é demonstrado pelo facto de num jogo inteiro (posso estar enganada) só o ter visto subir uma - uma só - vez à rede. Federer, por outro lado, é o tenista do "I can lose what I want." Podes ver isso no modo como, querendo um ponto, ele tantas vezes o perde por precipitação. Em Federer e Nadal eu vejo o duelo entre duas coisas muito antigas. Ulisses e Aquiles (na comparação talvez mais apta de David Foster Wallace Apolo e Dioniso). O diametralmente oposto medindo-se palmo a palmo. Em linhas gerais, acho que as pessoas são assim (por isso é que o ténis é uma boa metáfora para a vida). Há aqueles que jogam sempre no fundo do court, se falharem o seu ponto, levam os dedos às cordas da raquete, testam a pressão e dizem: eu não posso perder o que não possuí. Ao ver aquele ponto podia ter corrido para a bola ou não. A minha inteligência dizia-me que já estava meio perdido. Há depois aquelas pessoas para quem o mero desejo as prende ao que desejaram. Estas pessoas talvez sejam menos eficazes, talvez vençam menos Roland Garros e talvez percam sempre contra o mesmo tipo de adversário, concedendo sempre o mesmo erro quase infantil. Quando está a ser batido o ponto no fundo do court elas já estão à frente e talvez se tenham precipitado, mas ninguém pode dizer que não o quiseram.
Acho que na literatura, como no ténis e como na vida, prefiro os primeiros aos segundos. A distinção talvez seja meramente infinitesimal, mas como é bela essa inteireza de saber que há um ponto em relação ao que desejamos em que podemos, uma parte em generosidade outra em lealdade, admitir isso, que para perder basta ter desejado uma coisa. A beleza disso talvez seja só força. Uma coisa que fosse apenas bela de dizer. Mas estou em crer que não. Que não é apenas isso. É que a primeira forma de posse é o ímpeto da ideia, podes perder, mas o que quiseste, deo gratias, não o manietaste pela dúvida mesquinha de um cálculo ranhoso de pequena vantagem em caso de perda ou ganho. E nesse sentido Ricardo Reis e esses versos trinta mil vezes citados.

Geoffrey Hill, Oxford Professor of Poetry

The late Peter Porter once remarked on the tendency of contemporary poets to turn themselves into stand-up comedians, so concerned are they to appeal to a world that appears to be turning its back on their art. Hill will have nothing to do with such nonsense. His is a serious poetry about serious things. Sometimes he can seem too serious, forbidding to the point of rebarbativeness. Still, I'd rather have the rebarbativeness, replete as it is with exquisite effects, than the purveyors of performance doggerel seeking to lighten my day. There are perhaps a handful of poets whose work will survive into the 22nd century. In my view, Hill is one of them.