WE SHOULD BE GOING NOW (II)

Desde este navío de piedra inerte

varado en el centro de su empeño,

libero las amarras de mi ensueño

de algas ya olvidadas por la muerte.

En su proa tan vencida se divierte

una luz azul zigzagueada,
sempiterna cautiva en su mirada!

Balsa amiga, istmo de sal y piedra
que bien cumplió su singladura!
Reposa ahora el perfil de tu figura
bajel herido que el desdén arredra

WE SHOULD BE GOING NOW (I)

Yesterday I walked on sands... today, I hit the green hills, and I find the silence has changed, too... Instead paying attention to that loathsome vacuum,I come out of myself for a while, and I hear all sorts of friendly silences: the falling leaves,far away bells, 
the water hitting the stone, the flutter of the duck's wings... and then I realize that everything, even the eternal, has a time to be.

I 

MARÉ QUE ME LEVA

A minha emoção 
a doce obsessão
sonho que quase conseguisse tocar, 
que talvez já tocasse, 
surpresa, delícia apenas roçada, 
linha apenas sugerida (e já tão desconcertantemente bela!), 
mistério, cadência linda, 
meus, mar e poesia, 
força do meu pensamento e matéria, 
luz da minha retina...

Passeio desnorteado
liturgia minha de areias, 
a causa do meu spin e loucura, 
o meu deleite, a minha tortura, 
ainda intocada parte de mim!

O meu caminho que cruza o teu, 
ou então extravia-se e desaparece, 
vejo o meu desejo a desaguar no teu azul sereno.

Ouço pela noite fora, a lua
e penso "talvez, um dia, sejas também, 
a minha paz, e eu a tua".

TUDO O SENTIMENTO

Preciso não dormir
Até se consumar
O tempo da gente.
Preciso conduzir
Um tempo de te amar,
Te amando devagar e urgentemente.

Pretendo descobrir
No último momento
Um tempo que refaz o que desfez,
Que recolhe todo sentimento
E bota no corpo uma outra vez.

Prometo te querer
Até o amor cair
Doente, doente...
Prefiro, então, partir
A tempo de poder
A gente se desvencilhar da gente.

Depois de te perder,
Te encontro, com certeza,
Talvez num tempo da delicadeza,
Onde não diremos nada;
Nada aconteceu.
Apenas seguirei
Como encantado ao lado teu.

Chico Buarque/Cristovão Bastos

NOS HORIZONTES DO MUNDO

Nos movimentos do mundo
Cada um tem seu momento
Todos têm um pensamento
De vencer a solidão

E quem pensar um minuto
Saberá tudo dos ventos
E se tiver sentimento
Estenderá sua mão

Nos movimentos do mundo
Quem não teve um sofrimento
E não guardou na lembrança
Os restos de uma paixão

Coração recolha tudo
Essas coisas são do mundo
Só não guarde mais o medo
De viver a vida, não

Nos movimentos do mundo
Requerer perdas e danos
É abrigar desenganos
Sem amor e sem perdão

Nos horizontes do mundo
Não haverá movimento
Se o botão do sentimento
Não abrir no coração

HAPPINESS WAS A CHINESE MEAL

And, you know, at the end
Happiness was a chinese meal
served by an ugly man,
wearing a thick moustache,
who could not be called Lu
under any circumstance,
I mean the man, not the moustache,
and the crisscrossing of car paths, as well,
and the last-minute calls, between
the frustration of facing your empty chair
and the almost unbearable joy
of knowing you were finally coming,
and a prawn chop-suey
that came too late for me
and too early for you,
and needed to be sent back
to that unimaginable kitchen
(to be kept warm),
just as I sent forward my love
to your unimaginable heart
(for pretty much the same reason!),
and you finally came and saved
my rapidly sinking heart
and made my life unbearably happy
just by being here when I least expected,
as I watched you eating 
your overcooked prawns
with a glorious smile, scorted only
by dragons and pandas and chinese lanterns,
in a time when milenary Great Walls
had not yet being invented

RENDEZ-VOUS À TROIS

Three chairs made of stone, facing the ocean. Sitting on two of them, a woman and a man. They face the ocean, too. While they talk, they barely look at each other. The ocean listens everything they have to say to each other. 

From the outside, they would appear as complete strangers, both surrounded by their own personal bubble of time and space.

Yet, their coincidence is not... well... coincidental, so to speak. It is the result of a carefully planned rendez-vous. The bubble, just one, envelops both of them in a communion of sortilèges... Like the sounds coming from a seashore battered by unfatigable waves.

Today, she is wearing a glowing-white dress, that sits magically well on her body. "She looks as if she had come out from a dream", he thinks, wondering about her. Is she really real? Human beings never impressed him the way this woman does.

The man had arrived earlier. He did not know what to do with his time prior to the meeting. These hours were not really his: they already belonged to her. He is nervous. She noticed that as soon as he saw him on the bench, and smiled to herself. For him, the thrill of having her around is always a radical experience, even after all these months.

But the man arrived earlier, too, because he would not miss the moment of her arrival for anything in the world. It is been too long a strecht of time since the last time they met. Stupidly long.

He watches her coming from afar, a distant pier. She walks at a cruise speed, always constant, unhurried, very characteristic. The man can perceive the air around her being displaced with her elegant, regular cadence. The way she moves is the single most wondrous thing he will enjoy in his life, no matter how long and rich it may be.

There is something in her walk as if she were not going anywhere in special. She smiles nonchalantly. While watching her approach, his time stops as usual. Whatever he may have been thinking one minute before, it is gone, forever. He is still, deeply focused in the glowing-white of her figure, "a true angel", barely smiling at her. His whole being completely taken hostage by a beauty he has learnt to expect and delight on, but he will never apprehend or understand fully.

As she gets near, he can distinguish the contour of the glorious smile in her face. Radiant like a sunday, yet serene. She seems genuinely happy to see him. Lovely and fresh as a sunshine, awe-inspiring as a sunset. He fell on her orbit a long time ago, and has no plans to get out of it. He is delighted, confused. He is used to it. Fighting that would be as pointless as revolting against an angry ocean.

The man stands, walks towards her, exchange cheek kisses and helloes, just as friends would. They are in a public place. She sits down, crossing her alarmingly beautiful legs with natural, adorable, subdued modesty. Meanwhile, he, standing still, watches her figure unashamedly. He tries to take in all her beauties in small sips, without hurrying, also without pausing. 

Little by little, the paralizying effect gives way to a steady current of affection that warms his heart. Maybe hers, too. He cannot know for sure.

She keeps silent, wearing her lovely smile, patiently allowing the man to adjust his meters and gauges to her presence. No more words flow immediately, but this is allright. He is looking at her face now, to her blue eyes. He looks into them, slightly more time than it would be necessary, and she keeps her silent glance on him, without any sign of uneasiness. 

She knows he is drinking her blue, taking the daily dose that he has missed for too many weeks. "Let the guy replenish his levels", she seems to be thinking, amused and a bit touched, while smiling lovely to him.

"It's strange, you see? Yesterday I though I could not remember your voice anymore... It's been too long... yet, your eyes I could picture them easily, even with my own eyes closed". She laughs almost silently, opening her lips as if she were to talk, and closing her eyes.

She is flattered, she blushes. Not by his words only: she feels deeply in her spine his attitude of adoration towards her. Watching again her, blushing like this, takes the man to a moment and place where he felt a boundless happiness.

"How have you been?", she asks, looking again to him.

"Oh well, the unanswerable question again", he thinks, laughing, but only half-amused. "I keep going, thanks, you know...", he says finally.

So they are, side to side, both looking at the waves. It feels to him like a rendez-vous à trois. The ocean is the only other lover he will ever have. "...You know well how happy you make me, just by coming here. Thank you".

She does not even answer to that. She hates intros. "...it feels wonderful and weird at the same time...", he continues. And he is saying the truth, nothing but the truth. In his long, solitary walks, he has searched for her impossible company, he has weaved a thousand monologues to her, in his mind. If written, they would make several books she could read for months.

"What I mean is, hum,  all this time, I have not stopped for a second thinking in you, talking to you in my mind... I know it sounds crazy, but to me, it seems impossible that all of this may have been lost...without record".

She nods, as if facing a challenge, and protests: "Hey, but it was not lost... I was listening, somehow... and I read the messages you sent to me...". She looks a triffle uneasy, all traces of her former smile are gone from her beautiful face (but, justice be made, she is beautiful when she is serious, too).

"I did not mean it as a complaint, dear... I have past the complaining phase, and I am willing to move on. I just have'nt figured out where and how". 

He says this looking briefly to her right profile. He is astonished at what he sees. The blue of her eyes blends so perfectly with the ocean, all-in-one, and he thinks how unlikely will be to watch something so wonderful again, if she is ever gone. She has everything to make him whole until the end of times. Awed by the sheer beauty, he thinks "Why talking about anything at all, really?".

"I really read all your messages you sent to me this summer... You made me laugh sometimes, and I needed that. And you kept me company... Thanks", she says, although she hates everytime she feels forced to say something.

"You are welcome... Believe me, writing helped me, too, to forget the distance and the silence...You know what is the weirdest to me? It does not make sense I love you so much, I have so much good to give you, and I have so little time to do it... live... It does not make sense... And then, I waste a good part of that little time we have together talking about this relationship, instead of developing it... It is absurd, don't you think?... You know I love writing to you, but I should tell you how being with you is becoming essential to me. Even without talking, just being, you understand?".

Now she looks at him, sideways while he stares at the blue eye of the ocean. "I don't know... Absurd or not, it is what it is... We have our own duties, and you know well how hard it is some days to find time for ourselves, not to mention time to be together...".

"Yes, you are so right... I am just stating what I would love, so you know it. Reality tends to be boring, unless we spice it up with some wish...".

She looks intently at him. "I thought you prefered light and easy... I thought we had agreed on that...". She says that with a humorous undertone, knowing that things in reality are never so black and white.

"Yes, exactly! Light & Easy, the old classic, of course! You are so right!". They laugh together, whole-heartedly. They are in a place beyond words, now.

"...But you know, while we are laughing, I should tell you that I would be the Lightest and Easiest guy in the world if you just happened to love me a little". She listens to his words, digesting them. "Have'nt you noticed that? Whenever you have shown love to me, I glow... my words caress you...". He stops. She is still looking affectionately to him. "Hey, I don't imply you should love me. I just point to the fact that any lover becomes more generous and less needy (less focused in himself, hence lighter and easy), when the other lover feeds him with her own love. It is just natural..."

Again, the old talk. The feedback thing. This guy is as relentless as the ocean waves. Nevertheless, she seems very amused. "Wow! That was a long phrase! Relax, take a breath, man, watch your heart!". Then, serious again, she says: "I cannot say if I love you now, or if I will... I just don't know, and I cannot lie".

"I know, I know... And yes, I don't want you to lie to me, no matter how much I would rejoyce while listening certain words from this sexy-pretty lips of yours".

Laughs, complicity. Sometimes, the smoking-hot prelude to something they could have called "intimacy", or so he thinks at least. But how to know for sure? 

Sometimes, her spelling of words that have the power to change the world, and then again, "I must go, it is getting late", and tomorrow the same words will not be repeated, so they quite never get to build a nest for that stranded love to grow.

The man and the woman stay there for some more time. She knows too well what is going on in the man's heart. He does not have a clue, really, about what goes on in hers. Some days, total darkness. Some other days, a handful of hopeful rays of blue light. And so he goes on.

We will stop here our indiscreet dialogue transcript. Enough to say that they keep talking, and the time spent together is for the man so much more than a rendez-vous...! A tilt, an eternal song singing within his soul, anchoring him forever-and-ever to the radiant woman on his side.

Hours before, at home, while listening to a song, one among many hundreds that has been indelibly stamped on his soul by her sheer existence, he realized: "There is no end for us, really". 

And now, with her so near, and so distant, the thought has  something of a perverse, funeral flavour inside. 

Later, when he goes to bed at night, this relationship will seem fictional to him, almost a script he played in his mind and his heart, with a sparse, possibly irreal counterpoint beautifully sang by an angel dressed in glowing white.

NEIGE/NEU

NEIGE

Pas neige, fleurs de ciel
Mon coeur que tu t'efeuilles
Feuillets de ma vie dechirés
Petite pluie de papier blanc

Pas neige, fleurs de ciel
Douleur que tu t'efeuilles
Ah! Quelle tristresse il fait
Ah! Quelle tristesse il fait.

NEU

No és neu, són flors de cel.
Cor meu com te desfulles.
Són fulls de ma vida esquinçats.
Plugeta de paper blanc

No és neu, són flors de cel
Dolor, com te desfulles
¡Ai! Quina tristesa fa..
¡Ai! quina tristesa fa...

Palabras de Frederic Mompou. Trad. francesa de Mathilde Pomès

GRIEF BY NUMBERS

 

 
As soon as you were gone
I started counting,
for I expected two would come exactly
at the end of one, or so it should,

but the maths in this garden of mine,
oh my, were such an unreliable thing

I might as well expect
horizons to be horizontal, but
that damn thorn
was meticulously tearing apart 
every plan,
every calculation

The darkest came sooner,
the sweeter never came,
and over this river, nothing 
but the winter's blackest rain

Such a pity all these calculations 
in my garden,
all these variables and constants,
that I sketched with the outmost care...


Really, nobody would ever imagine
how much love can go
into the simplest equation

REGRESSO NA DISTÂNCIA À TUA FIGURA

Depois de me sonhar nos teus abraços

regresso na distância à tua figura

em trânsfuga cadencia, à procura

do fulgor fugidio nos teus passos

Sem a dança curvilínea dos teus braços,

e o coral incêndio azul do teu olhar,

o que faria o meu peito latejar?

Pois não sendo a tua graça mais minha

do que este ar turvo que respiro,

nesta alma o meu anelo aninha

de um dia ser, eu, o ar do teu suspiro.

THE AFTERNOON TRAVEL

Over the edge of my dream
the lamplight gaily gleams before
the fragrant halls of morning

Such beauties and graces
my eyes would have never seen
here in this still limit of the world

Your cheeks grazing on my shoulder
my legs rubbing against you like a cat
(nature splendidly gains my heart)

Into these few quiet hours
we bright together, alone, in the dusk
one hand resting heavy on your hip
the other picking at the fog of disbelief

And the afternoon holds us as a house
as the Place we sought after for years
like an old cherished song,
like a smoke taking us  
               from this pleasure
                         to the next

THE MIRROR INSIDE

E poderás reconhecer-te, se lembrares
os turvos caudais do já sonhado,
as lágrimas curvas como meridianos,
derramadas sobre lençóis sem nome,
as areias alegres onde amaste,
ondulante amante de olhos fixos no mar

Hoje caminhas sobre a pele do dia,
os olhos tão abertos,
enchendo o céu dos teus azuis

De toda a memória,
a tua, a minha
apenas vale esse dom luzidio
de construir o nosso caminho de hoje
com o pó dos nossos sonhos e estrelas

THE UNDYING LOVE (DRAFTS, UNSENT - OBLIVION FOLDER)

Words, words, so many of them,
buried alive on the drafts limbo
and other nowhere lands,
so tired of dying a million tiny deaths

Who could read now the spells
of your wrinkled, agonizying souls?

Misplaced, soulless sketches
of nothing, shadows or embers or flames
diseased words, damaged
at birth, exhausted messengers who must die

Words, sleeping the seamless dream
of nothingness,
some so irreversibly ill, or patiently
degrading under the adverse rain of time gone

All of them, papers who gladly would have
offered their dusty paper life
to sing your forever song, to burn
in the glorious bonfire of your love

Numbed ink, voiceless stains
unsent drafts, the forgotten, the forever-lost,
those aborted on the grounds
of being plain stupid, witless
uninspired, undeserving

All of them broken, misshapen
misspelt mismatched misguided,
mediocre, poor, half-dead already
before being born

And yet, all of them in a row,

revealing with unconfessable,

alarming precision

my stubborn,

              undying

                        love

(And the rest, thereafter,
will be silence, if it must)