JMW Turner The Burning of the Houses of Parliament 1834
Watercolour on paper. Tate. Bequeathed by the artist 1856
Clock is ticking, bells are ringing...are we going to do something about it ?
Friday, August 12, 2011
Burning down the House
JMW Turner The Burning of the Houses of Parliament 1834
Watercolour on paper. Tate. Bequeathed by the artist 1856
Clock is ticking, bells are ringing...are we going to do something about it ?
Breaking the Rule
Breaking the Rule
I. The Art of Illumination
At times it is a good life, with the evening sun
gilding the abbey tower, the brook's cold waters
sliding past and every hour in my Book
a blank page, vellum pumice-stoned
to chalky lustres which my inks suffuse:
saffron and sandarach and dragon's blood,
azure and verdigris. Monsters and every type of beast
curl round the words. Each man here has a past,
and each man reasons for his faith. I wronged
a woman once and nothing I did after could atone
or throw a light upon the blackness of that deed,
whose harm lay in the telling, not the doing.
My floor is strewn with thyme and rosemary
to mask the odours of my craft – fish glue,
gum resins, vinegar and oils. With these I shape
the hosts of the redeemed, and every face
takes on the features of a face I've known
and every angel's face beneath the shadow
of its many coloured wings is hers alone.
II. The Art of Signing
There are ways among the stone and shadow
of our cloisters to transgress the Rule. We speak
in signs: a language with no syntax.
For the sign of bread you make a circle
with your thumbs and index fingers – like a belt
that presses silk against a woman's waist.
For the sign of an eel squeeze each hand tight
as one who grasps a cord of hair to kiss
that one mouth only in the frantic din
of the ale-house where we used to dance,
and later outside with the grainy dusk
unloading a sough of foot-falls in my ear,
our four feet shuffling together
and in time across the quiet earth.
The rhythm of my days goes slower now:
matins and lauds, vespers and compline.
For the sign of silence put a finger
to the dry muscle of your mouth,
the darkness that's inside it. Keep it there
Sal
Penso que o mundo bem precisa de provar nos lábios sal grego novamente. Voltar às fontes clássicas da nossa cultura.
Precisamos de um pensamento e nada como voltarmos à nossa matriz, regressar a casa, agora que vivemos o mundo todo simultaneamente.
Salt
by Eugenio Montale
translated by Jamie McKendrick
We don't know if tomorrow has green pastures
in mind for us to lie down in beside
the ever-youthful patter of fresh water
or if it means to plant us in some arid
outback ugly valley of the shadow
where dayspring's lost for good, interred beneath
a lifetime of mistakes. We'll maybe wake up
in foreign cities where the sun's a ghost,
a figment of itself and angular
starched consonants braid the tongue at its root
so all sense of who we are is lost to words,
and nothing that we know can be unravelled.
Even then, some vestige of the sea,
its plosive tide, its fretwork crests will surge
inside our syllables, bronze like the chant of bees.
However far we've stumbled from the source
a trace of the sea's voice will lodge in us
as the sunlight somehow still abides in
faded tufts that cling to bricks and kerbstones
on half-cleared slums or bomb-sites left unbuilt.
Then out of nowhere after years of silence
the words we used, our unobstructed accents,
will well up from the dark of childhood,
and once more on our lips we'll taste Greek salt.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
In Defence of Adultery
In Defence of Adultery
We don’t fall in love: it rises through us
the way that certain music does –
whether a symphony or ballad –
and it is sepia-coloured,
like spilt tea that inches up
the tiny tube-like gaps inside
a cube of sugar lying by a cup.
Yes, love’s like that: just when we least
needed or expected it
a part of us dips into it
by chance or mishap and it seeps
through our capillaries, it clings
inside the chambers of the heart.
We’re victims, we say: mere vessels,
drinking the vanilla scent
of this one’s skin, the lustre
of another’s eyes so skilfully
darkened with bistre. And whatever
damage might result we’re not
to blame for it: love is an autocrat
and won’t be disobeyed.
Sometimes we manage
to convince ourselves of that.
© 2003, Julia Copus
From: In Defence of Adultery
Publisher: Bloodaxe, Newcastle, 2003
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
August 2011
"We're not all gathering together for a cause, we're running down Foot Locker."
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
o padrão ouro
Em tempos o padrão era o ouro e tudo era aferido pelo seu valor nesse metal.
Agora que todos os padrões se fundem e tudo parece volátil, reiteremos a nossa crença na beleza. O padrão que nunca se funde.
Monday, August 8, 2011
Fala comigo a linguagem das pedras e do ferro
Fala comigo a linguagem das pedras e do ferro,
bate-me como uma clara luz,
mostra-me a sombra e o iluminado caminho.
Rastros gravados na areia, apaga-os o vento.
(Speak to me the language of stones and iron,
hit me like a revealing light,
show me the shadow and the enlightened way.
Tracks recorded on sand, are deleted by the wind.)
Goat
Goat
by Jo Shapcott
(Her Book/ Poems 1988-1998, Faber & Faber)
Dusk, deserted road, and suddenly
I was a goat. To be truthful, it took
two minutes, though it seemed sudden,
for the horns to pop out of my skull,
for the spine to revolutionise and go
horizontal, for the fingers to glue
together and for the nails to become
important enough to upgrade to hoof.
The road was not deserted any more, but full
of goats, and I liked that, even though I hate
the rush hour on the tube, the press of bodies.
Now I loved snuffling behind his or her ear,
licking a flank or two, licking and snuffling here,
there, wherever I liked. I lived for the push
of goat muscle and goat bone, the smell of goat fur,
goat breath and goat sex. I ended up on the edge
of the crowd where the road met the high
hedgerow with the scent of earth, a thousand
kinds of grass, leaves and twigs, flower-heads
and the intoxicating tang of the odd ring-pull
or rubber to spice the mixture. I wanted
to eat everything. I could have eaten the world
and closed my eyes to nibble at the high
sweet leaves against the sunset. I tasted
that old sun and the few dark clouds
and some tall buildings far away in the next town.
I think I must have swallowed an office block
because this grinding enormous digestion tells me
it’s stuck on an empty corridor which has
at the far end, I know, a tiny human figure.
by Jo Shapcott
(Her Book/ Poems 1988-1998, Faber & Faber)
Dusk, deserted road, and suddenly
I was a goat. To be truthful, it took
two minutes, though it seemed sudden,
for the horns to pop out of my skull,
for the spine to revolutionise and go
horizontal, for the fingers to glue
together and for the nails to become
important enough to upgrade to hoof.
The road was not deserted any more, but full
of goats, and I liked that, even though I hate
the rush hour on the tube, the press of bodies.
Now I loved snuffling behind his or her ear,
licking a flank or two, licking and snuffling here,
there, wherever I liked. I lived for the push
of goat muscle and goat bone, the smell of goat fur,
goat breath and goat sex. I ended up on the edge
of the crowd where the road met the high
hedgerow with the scent of earth, a thousand
kinds of grass, leaves and twigs, flower-heads
and the intoxicating tang of the odd ring-pull
or rubber to spice the mixture. I wanted
to eat everything. I could have eaten the world
and closed my eyes to nibble at the high
sweet leaves against the sunset. I tasted
that old sun and the few dark clouds
and some tall buildings far away in the next town.
I think I must have swallowed an office block
because this grinding enormous digestion tells me
it’s stuck on an empty corridor which has
at the far end, I know, a tiny human figure.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Prayer
Some days, although we can not pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.
Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, a small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock still, hearing his youth
in the distant latin chanting of a train.
Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.
Darkness outside. Inside, a radio's prayer —
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.
(I had posted this already...found it again and have to post it again.)
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Thetis
Thetis
No man frightens me. Watch as I stretch
my limbs for the transformation, I'm laughing
to feel the surge of the other shapes beneath my skin.
It's like this: here comes the full thrill of my art
as the picture of a variegated
lizard insinuates itself into my mind.
I extend my neck, lengthen fingers, push
down toes to find the form. My back begins
to undulate, the skin to gleam. I think
my soul has slithered with me into this
shape as real as the little, long tongue in my mouth,
as the sun on my back, as the skill in absolute stillness.
My name is Thetis Creatrix and you,
voyeur, if you looked a little closer, would see
the next ripples spread up my bloody tail, to bloom
through my spine as the bark begins to harden
over my trunk. Already I'm so much of the oak
I lean everything towards the black oxygen
in the black air, I process delicious gases
through my personal chemistry, suck moisture
from the earth to a pulse so slow you can't detect it.
Next tigress. Low tremendous purrs start at the pit
of my stomach, I'm curving through long grass,
all sinew, in a body where tension
is the special joy and where the half-second
before a leap tells it all. Put out a paw
to dab a stone, an ant, a dead lamb. Life,
my life, is all play even up to the moment
when I'm tripped up, thrown down, bound,
raped until I bleed from my eyes,
beaten out of shape and forced to bring forth War.
No man frightens me. Watch as I stretch
my limbs for the transformation, I'm laughing
to feel the surge of the other shapes beneath my skin.
It's like this: here comes the full thrill of my art
as the picture of a variegated
lizard insinuates itself into my mind.
I extend my neck, lengthen fingers, push
down toes to find the form. My back begins
to undulate, the skin to gleam. I think
my soul has slithered with me into this
shape as real as the little, long tongue in my mouth,
as the sun on my back, as the skill in absolute stillness.
My name is Thetis Creatrix and you,
voyeur, if you looked a little closer, would see
the next ripples spread up my bloody tail, to bloom
through my spine as the bark begins to harden
over my trunk. Already I'm so much of the oak
I lean everything towards the black oxygen
in the black air, I process delicious gases
through my personal chemistry, suck moisture
from the earth to a pulse so slow you can't detect it.
Next tigress. Low tremendous purrs start at the pit
of my stomach, I'm curving through long grass,
all sinew, in a body where tension
is the special joy and where the half-second
before a leap tells it all. Put out a paw
to dab a stone, an ant, a dead lamb. Life,
my life, is all play even up to the moment
when I'm tripped up, thrown down, bound,
raped until I bleed from my eyes,
beaten out of shape and forced to bring forth War.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
conversation
(Tom Waits for Marianne Faithful)
Will you take me across the Channel,
London Bridge is falling down.
Strange a woman tries to save
What a man will try to drown.
And he's the rain that they predicted,
Its the forecast every time.
The rose has died because you picked it
And I believe that brandy's mine.
And all over the world
Strangers
Talk only about the weather.
All over the world
It's the same
It's the same
It's the same.
The world is getting flatter,
The sky is falling all around.
And nothing is the matter
For I never cry in town.
And a love like ours, my dear,
Is best measured when its down.
And I never buy umbrellas,
For there's always one around.
And all over the world Strangers Talk only about the weather. All over the world It's the same
It's the same
It's the same.
And you know that its beginning,
And you know that its the end
When once again we are strangers
And the fog comes rolling in.
And all over the world
Strangers
Talk only about the weather.
All over the world
It's the same
It's the same
It's the same.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Thursday, July 28, 2011
love is what we want
"But love is what we want, not freedom. Who then is the unluckier man? The beloved, who is given his heart's desire and must for ever after fear its loss, or the free man, with his unlooked-for liberty, naked and alone between the captive armies of the earth?"
— Salman Rushdie (The Ground Beneath Her Feet)
Monday, July 25, 2011
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Fernando Pessoa (himself)
Autopsychography
by Fernando Pessoa (himself)
The poet is a faker
Who’s so good at his act
He even fakes the pain
Of pain he feels in fact.
And those who read his words
Will feel in what he wrote
Neither of the pains he has
But just the one they don’t.
And so around its track
This thing called the heart winds,
A little clockwork train
To entertain our minds.
by Fernando Pessoa (himself)
The poet is a faker
Who’s so good at his act
He even fakes the pain
Of pain he feels in fact.
And those who read his words
Will feel in what he wrote
Neither of the pains he has
But just the one they don’t.
And so around its track
This thing called the heart winds,
A little clockwork train
To entertain our minds.
Monday, July 18, 2011
how snow falls
ow Snow Falls
Like the unshaven prickle
of a sharpened razor,
this new coldness in the air,
the pang
of something intangible.
Filling our eyes,
the sinusitis of perfume
without the perfume.
And then love's vertigo,
love's exactitude,
this snow, this transfiguration
we never quite get over.
Like the unshaven prickle
of a sharpened razor,
this new coldness in the air,
the pang
of something intangible.
Filling our eyes,
the sinusitis of perfume
without the perfume.
And then love's vertigo,
love's exactitude,
this snow, this transfiguration
we never quite get over.
to anonymous
90 North
At home, in my flannel gown, like a bear to its floe,
I clambered to bed; up the globe's impossible sides
I sailed all night—till at last, with my black beard,
My furs and my dogs, I stood at the northern pole.
There in the childish night my companions lay frozen,
The stiff fur knocked at my starveling throat,
And I gave my great sigh: the flakes came huddling,
Were they really my end? In the darkness I turned to my rest.
—Here, the flag snaps in the glare and silence
Of the unbroken ice. I stand here,
The dogs bark, my beard is black, and I stare
At the North Pole . . .
And now what? Why, go back.
Turn as I please, my step is to the south.
The world—my world spins on this final point
Of cold and wretchedness: all lines, all winds
End in this whirlpool I at last discover.
And it is meaningless. In the child's bed
After the night's voyage, in that warm world
Where people work and suffer for the end
That crowns the pain—in that Cloud-Cuckoo-Land
I reached my North and it had meaning.
Here at the actual pole of my existence,
Where all that I have done is meaningless,
Where I die or live by accident alone—
Where, living or dying, I am still alone;
Here where North, the night, the berg of death
Crowd me out of the ignorant darkness,
I see at last that all the knowledge
I wrung from the darkness—that the darkness flung me—
Is worthless as ignorance: nothing comes from nothing,
The darkness from the darkness. Pain comes from the darkness
And we call it wisdom. It is pain.
Anonymous submission.
Randall Jarrell
At home, in my flannel gown, like a bear to its floe,
I clambered to bed; up the globe's impossible sides
I sailed all night—till at last, with my black beard,
My furs and my dogs, I stood at the northern pole.
There in the childish night my companions lay frozen,
The stiff fur knocked at my starveling throat,
And I gave my great sigh: the flakes came huddling,
Were they really my end? In the darkness I turned to my rest.
—Here, the flag snaps in the glare and silence
Of the unbroken ice. I stand here,
The dogs bark, my beard is black, and I stare
At the North Pole . . .
And now what? Why, go back.
Turn as I please, my step is to the south.
The world—my world spins on this final point
Of cold and wretchedness: all lines, all winds
End in this whirlpool I at last discover.
And it is meaningless. In the child's bed
After the night's voyage, in that warm world
Where people work and suffer for the end
That crowns the pain—in that Cloud-Cuckoo-Land
I reached my North and it had meaning.
Here at the actual pole of my existence,
Where all that I have done is meaningless,
Where I die or live by accident alone—
Where, living or dying, I am still alone;
Here where North, the night, the berg of death
Crowd me out of the ignorant darkness,
I see at last that all the knowledge
I wrung from the darkness—that the darkness flung me—
Is worthless as ignorance: nothing comes from nothing,
The darkness from the darkness. Pain comes from the darkness
And we call it wisdom. It is pain.
Anonymous submission.
Randall Jarrell
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
on writing
"Writing is an obsessive-compulsive disorder." – T. Coraghessan Boyle
I really thought it was…then I went to work in a factory, then I had kids, then I thought it was useless…Now I think it’s just another form of loneliness.
I really thought it was…then I went to work in a factory, then I had kids, then I thought it was useless…Now I think it’s just another form of loneliness.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
uma ideia imprecisa, uma vaga lembrança
uma ideia imprecisa, uma vaga lembrança
qualquer coisa debaixo da lingua, ou apenas a ideia de um perfume
qualquer coisa assim vaga e fugidia, (mas que queremos agarrar)
como a areia da praia ou a água do mar
abre as mãos, abre as mãos,
fecha os olhos, escuta
será música, serão risos, manhã ?
passo a mão pelo pelo do meu cão, cantam os pássaros vespertinos
estou na soleira da porta, passam nuvens, abanam docemente aa árvores
e o dia volta a casa.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Friday, July 8, 2011
how to cook a wolf, considering the oyester...
"Poet of the appetites."—John Updike
http://spicedish.typepad.com/spice_dish/2008/03/with-bold-knife.html
http://www.justhungry.com/2005/03/reading_mfk_fis.html
http://wn.com/M_F_K_Fisher
"People ask me: Why do you write about food, and eating, and drinking? Why don't you write about the struggle for power and security and about love, the way others do?
They ask it accusingly, as if I were somehow gross, unfaithful to the honor of my craft.
The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry. But there is more than that. It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it...and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied...and it is all one."
Thursday, July 7, 2011
sentado no cais
O rio passa, passa
e nunca cessa.
O vento passa, passa
e nunca cessa.
A vida passa:
nunca regressa.
América, Aztecas,
Versão de Herberto Helder, in Rosa do Mundo - 2001 poemas para o futuro
e nunca cessa.
O vento passa, passa
e nunca cessa.
A vida passa:
nunca regressa.
América, Aztecas,
Versão de Herberto Helder, in Rosa do Mundo - 2001 poemas para o futuro
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
portrait of woman
germany, berlin, egyptian museum, portrait of woman, funerary coptic, egyptian art
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Monday, July 4, 2011
Óscar Niemeyer, Brasil o mundo
"Niemeyer mudou de nome e chama-se agora somente arquitectura
arte arejada palavra de betão proferida dos telhados mais altos da idade futura"
[Óscar Niemeyer, Ruy Belo]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
