Friedrich Nietzsche

From Trick, Morning and Revenge, by Friedrich Nietzsche. In the last day of this first month. Just for convention. Just a question: Should I go ahead, with this blog? Does someone read it?

WISDOM OF THE WORLD

Do not stay in a plain land.
Do not go up very high.
The most beautiful look over the world
Is at the half hillside.

JUDGMENTS OF THE TIRED MEN

All the depleted ones curse the sun;
For them the value of the trees is... in the shade!

The Merry Science, Friedrich Nietzsche, Germany, 1844-1900
Translated by IP

Mzi Mahola

Today, finally in this blog, a poem from Africa.

HOUSE OF THE POOR

When I was a little boy
I never questioned why
A solitary path
Led from a poor man’s hut.

Why it zigzagged
Like the trail of a wounded beast.

Now that I’m a burdened man
I know why the rich are troubled
When we grumble.

© 2000, Mzi Mahola, South Africa
From:When rains come
Publisher: Carapace Poets, an imprint of Snailpress, South Africa

Dylan Thomas

Copyright © Lee Miller Archives

All about Dylan Thomas at:
http://www.dylanthomas.com

WAS THERE A TIME

Was there a time when dancers with their fiddles
In children's circuses could stay their troubles?
There was a time they could cry over books,
But time has set its maggot on their track.
Under the arc of the sky they are unsafe.
What's never known is safest in this life.
Under the skysigns they who have no arms
Have cleanest hands, and, as the heartless ghost
Alone's unhurt, so the blind man sees best.

Dylan Thomas.
Swansea, Wales, 27 th October 1914 – New York, 9th November, 1953

Kalidasa

DESIRE...

Desire push her to the lover
But the fear stops her for a while
She looks like the silk from a flag
Sometimes leaves sometimes steal from the wind.

Kalidasa, Índia. V cent.
Translated by IP

Anonymous II

NIGHT VISIT

Move away the bamboo curtain,
my love;
come and lean on me.
If my mother listen,
I will say:"It was only the wind".

Anonymous, VIII Century (Japan)
Tranlated by Isaac Pereira

Winter Haiku

Covide. North of portugal. By Isaac Pereira

Naked trees.
White,the new moon
in a deeply blue.

Koi Hui Sio

Anonymous I

PEAR SYRUP, WINE SYRUP

Your body is like a vase,
Where the wine boils, sweet like sugar.

In it is profoundly, the flavoured clove,
The spice and terrestrial cinnamom,
The acid lemon.

Lightly, a knife remove the fruits skin that the fingers touch
And deposit them in the vase. A fire vase.

I close my eyes.
The kitchen is an aroma of nectar and grapes.

While the wood spoon stirs,
I wait for the seed, the lips, the drunkness jelly.
And I reduce inside the vase,
The bubbling liquids

A ruby syrup like the pears! Matured!
Chlep! Chlep!

Anonymous.
Translated by IP

Issa Kobayashi

Snowy night.
It has people that they walk
in silence.

Winter haiku. Solitude.

For more information about Issa Kobayashi visit:

http://haikuguy.com/issa/index.html

Arthur Rimbaud

Again the winter.
Rimbaud, a young poet with 16 years old, describes us, a trip inside a coach.

DREAM FOR THE WINTER

To Her.

In the winter we shall go in a small pink coach
With blue cushions
We will be well. A nest of insane kisses rests
In each soft corner.

You will close your eyes. Not to see, by the glassware
Ugly face shades of the night,
Those aggressive monstrosities, mob
Of black demons and of the black wolves.

After that, you will feel the face scratched...
A small kiss, like an insane spider,
Will run on you for the neck...

And you will say to me: "Seek!", by inclining the head
-And we will take time to find this little animal
-Who travels too much…

Inside a coach . October, 7th 1870.

Translated by IP

IN JANUARY

Shadows Playing. A morning at Orsay Museum,Paris. May,2005.
Photography by Isaac Pereira.

To my mother...

IN JANUARY

In January, cats stand still in the sun
Between the ruins of abandoned houses.
Cold goes through the nostrils
And comes out from the mouth in fumes of surprise.

It is the time and latitude of sweet sleep and vegetal
Of childish trees of imagination, of the blue, lilies and pink hydrangeas ….
And there are buds in seedbeds without name,
Nest dug in the interior of the moss, in the uterus of the earth.
Certain that they will be red until death,
will be one day, to awake vernal of hands, of fingers,
of our cold and worm hands like lips of blue fire.

Return to the old house
Attached to the granite rain,
To a gale of naked tree.
In the streets where the margins are current of rivers,
The gutters are cataracts,
The estuary where hides the weight of the world.
The unknown nightmares.

But today You believe. Today I had a dream. A dream like everyone.
It was an oriental flower market.
I greeted the sellers that I acquainted in days that were not dreams.
The stalls were yellow, were white.
Oh I may have found you, maybe lost in those petals.
Leaving a dream to a cold reality.
In January, cats wonder like men in abandoned city,
Invisible, giving up underneath the viaducts
Without words, making fire, cold, do not dance.
As if they snarl softly.

In January, I am not yet tired,
Extend my legs in hot water of the night
And, like a distant grumble, hearing you sing:

DOBA, DOBA, DOBADOIRA…*

I do not fall asleep alone.

* Portuguese folk song.

Ricardo Reis. Fernando Pessoa

Photo by Isaac Pereira. Winter, 2006.

STARING AT THE DISTANCE, MOUNTAINS...

Staring at the distance, mountains with snow and sun,
But the quiet cold is soft already
Which smooths and sharps
The darts of the high sun.

Today,Neera, does not hide us.
Nothing is missing, because we are nothing.
We await nothing
And we freeze at the sun.

But as it is,enjoy the moment,
Festives with enjoyment softly,
And to wait for death
To whom is known.

16-6-1914

Ricardo Reis, Odes and Other Poems.
Assírio e Alvim Publishers.

Winter

To my father...

I

Cold, in the moonlight,
the grapevine shadow,
touch the stone.

II

Remained the branches,
a song of a bird,
frozen wires.

III

Someone forgot it:
it hangs in the naked branches
an old grapes cluster.

IV

I open the window:
All gray! Only snow!
A blackbird in the branch!

V

A frost morning:
Air of burnt vineyard
in the old ones fire.

Koi Hui-Sio
Translated by IP

Fiama Hasse Pais Brandão

Wall concret.Icarus at the Pireo harbour, Athens. August,1991.
By Isaac Pereira.
Assembly with a Fiama Hasse Pais Brandão picture.

EPÍSTLE TO DEDALUS

Why you gave to your son plumage wax wings
if the powerfull sun at the sky would undo them?
It did not hear me, so far, however I thought I said:
all the sons are Icarus, who will die in the sea.
Later they return, prodigal, to the love between the blood
of what they were and of what they are now, sons of the sons.

Fiama Hasse Pais Brandão, in Epístolas e Memorandos, 1996
Translated by IP

One thought. Eduardo Lourenço, portuguese thinker:

Fiama is “a kind of a silence shell, which reflects all of the world pains and joys. (...) But now we will have enough time to read from her, how is usual in Portugal, where we awake only with the dead in our arms" and "if there is a heaven for the poets as we said that exists for the children when they die, for her innocence, Fiama, who had this wonderful flare name, will have a certain place in it."

Eduardo Lourenço is the preface author of “Obra Breve”, book that congregates the completely Fiama Hasse Pais Brandão poetry. (Assírio e Alvim, 2006).

Fernando Esquio

'Cantigas de Amigo' manuscript by Martin Codax
Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.


SHALL WE GO, SISTER

Shall we go, sister, shall we sleep,
at the lake edges where i saw
hunt the birds, my beloved.

Shall we go, sister, shall we amuse
at the lake edges where i saw
hunt the birds, my beloved.

At the lake edges where i saw
his arc in the hand wounding the birds
hunt the birds, my beloved.

At the lake edges where i saw
his arc in the hand shooting the birds
hunt the birds, my beloved.

His arc in the hand wounding the birds
and the ones who sangs, let them run away,
hunt the birds, my beloved.

His arc in the hand shooting the birds
and the ones who sangs do not want them kill,
hunt the birds, my beloved.

Galaico-português
(Ending of 13th century - beginning of 14th century)

Translated by IP

See: http://www.vieiros.com/galego.org/linguadascantigas/index.html

Dionisis, The Sufist

THE GIRL WITH ROSES

You, who brings the roses, is from the roses the enchantment/
you bring.
What do you sell? You? The roses, or the roses and you?

Dionisis

Palatine Anthology
Translated by IP from the portuguese one made by Fernando Pessoa

"The Greek Anthology, so-called "Palatine Anthology, is a collection of over 6,000 short Greek poems. They cover a great variety of subjects in various styles, and were composed by some 300 poets over more than a millenium of Greek culture."

See: www.ancientlibrary.com/greek-anthology

Pablo García Casado

LOVE

a woman always inside the kitchen
always with problems with the menstruation
the garbage do not forget to walk the dog

an illness that cure the years
a radio wich begins to lose the sender stations
a train that always makes the same passage

betwween two cities
each time more moved away from each other.

Pablo García Casado (Cordova,1972)
In "Antologia de Poesia Espanhola, anos 90"
Joaquim Manuel Magalhães
Relógio d'água
Translated by IP

A certain place in Ou Mun

Pagode Tree
(Flora Microcarpa)

MONG HÁ

Top of the mountain
a bird of the wind
in silence, sings.

Koi Hui Sio

Yao Feng

Yao Feng, Yao Jingming, was born in Beijing. He has a strong relationship with Portugal. Eugénio de Andrade is one of his portuguese favourits poets. Is considered one of the most important chinese poets in the new generation. Yao Feng is the coordinator of the Sino-Western Poetry Magazine. Easily he expresses himself in portuguese. Is the author of four poetry books in portuguese and in chinese. Published in 2006 Farawaysong, from where we took:

TROUGHT THE CENTRAL PLAINS

the train passing trough the land
the sweet corn taking in the sunshine

years pass
the corn lays down many times
stands up to feed us
climbs many times
these kernels like me smiling
all yellow teeth
not a single one is golden

Yao Feng, Farawaysong

In the book we can see paintings from Ge Zhen. At the end of the tree, nº2, is one of them:

Eugénio de Andrade

Dario Gonçalves photo, published in the book COM O SOL EM CADA SÍLABA

CRYSTALLIZATIONS

1
With words I love.

2
You must incline like a rose
only when the wind pass.

3
Undress yourself
like the dew
inside a morning shell.

4
Love
like the river goes up the last steps
to the meeting with its stream bed.

5
How can we blossom
to the weight of much light?

6
I am of ticket:
I love the short-lived.

7
Where I hope to die
it will be morning still?

From Ostinato Rigore -1964
Translated by IP.

Carlos Drummond de Andrade

A poet with soul and hard work. That what Carlos Drummond de Andrade is: a person from Minas Gerais, Brazil, born in 1902 in Itabira. ("that is why I am sad and proud: made by metal" - confessed im "Confidence of an Itabirano").

Says Carlos Drummond de Andrade:

I understand that poetry is a matter of great responsability and not considered honest a poet who only make verses because a jealousy, needs of money or being in an instant with the liric forces of the world, without a daily hard work with the technical secrets, lecture, contemplation, and also the action. Even the poets set themselves, and a disarmed poet is a human being who is at the mercy of easy inspirations, docile with the fashions and commitments.

CHILDHOOD

To Abgar Renault

My father mounted the horse, he goes to the countryside.
My mother remain sitted to knit.
My litle brother sleeps.
I myself lonely boy between mongorove
read Robinson Crusoé tale.
A long story with never ending.

On a mid bright day a voice wish learned
to sing us to sleep in the slaves village - and never forgot
call to the coffee.
Black coffee blacker than the old black lady
delicious coffee
good coffee.

My mother remain sitted to knit
looking at me:
- Psiu...Do not awake the boy.
To the cradle where a mosquito was settle.
And give a whisper...so deeply!

Far away my father camped
in the infinit farm weeds.

And I did not know that my story
was more beautifuk than the Robinson Crusoé tale.

From A FAMILÍA QUE ME DEI
Translated by IP

Lost

Time does not leave here anymore. What I have now is the fact of beeing wait like the days that pass. Never more maters the hands. If I knew wich kind of tales, forgoten tales should I tell to You. Sailors songs listen by far, when I leave the wharf, at the Inner harbour. A fragile sun falls above lovers lips, distant passions kept inside my secrets-box, like kisses during the moonlight. I keep my body erosion, my dry mouth, a transparency stare, broken.

Lost, I live here, remembering that the future existed, once, at the Sailors Alley.


Koi Hui Sio

Macau, January 2002

East

Leaving the harbour,
The ship then in an instant, will be a distant ship,
leaves a black smoke chimney,
circulates at the sea, at the sky, at the grey sea,
until disappears inside the fog.

At the desert beach, leaving the harbour,
There were soon kisses between lovers,
The wind, the rain, the trees,
And other essential things as the sand.
There is no sun, the invisible ship already gone far away,
And the night comes without seagulls screams.

At this moment I loom at the reality window,
My stare is like the black track of the far away ship,
Heading to a distant end,
A smile that advances looking back to the land,
Missing everything, even the future.

Koi Hui Sio

Tonino Guerra

ESPECIALLY ON SUNDAYS

Especially on sundays
when no one is at home
at the end of June
I go up to the roof
to understand beyond the walls
the quiet town.

Tonino guerra, Stories for a calmness night

Matsuo Bashô

WINTER

Hands on the fire
...and on the wall
my friend shadow

Matsuo Bashô

The dew solitary taste

W.H.Auden

MUSÉE DES BEAUX ARTS

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Camilo Pessanha

INSCRIPTION

From Clepsidra


I saw the light in a lost country.
My soul is languid and defenseless.
Oh! Who could slide without noise!
Inside the soil disappear, like a worm does.

Camilo Pessanha (Coimbra,1867-Macau,1926)

Hannah Szenes

WALKING TO CAESAREA

Lord: Wish that never ends
The sand and the sea,
The rush of the waters,
The lightning of the sky,
The Man prayers.


Hannah Szenes (1921-1944) - Hungary

Li Bai

DRINKING ALONE BENEATH THE MOON
















Among the blossoms, a single jar of wine.
No one else here, I ladle it out myself.

Raising my cup, I toast the bright moon,
and facing my shadow makes friends three,

though moon has never understood wine,
and shadow only trails along behind me.

Kindred a moment with moon and shadow,
I've found a joy that must infuse spring:

I sing, and moon rocks back and forth;
I dance, and shadow tumbles into pieces.

Sober, we're together and happy. Drunk,
we scatter away into our own directions:

intimates forever, we'll wander carefree
and meet again in Milky Way distances.

Li Bai

Translated by David Hinton

Cesare Pavese

BLACK EARTH RED EARTH

Black earth red earth,

you come from the sea,

from the arid green,

where there are ancient

words and bloody toi

land geranium among rocks—

you don't know how much you bring

of toil and words from the sea,

you're rich like a memory,

like the barren countryside,

you hard and sweetest word,

ancient because of the blood

gathered in the eyes;young,

like a fruit that is a memory and a season—

your breath restsunder the sky of August,

the olives of your looksweeten the sea,

and you live and live again

without amazement,

certainlike the earth,

darklike the earth,

a grinder of seasons and dreams

that reveals itself under the moon

to be so old,

just like the hands of your mother,

the bowl of the brazier.

translated by Linh DINH

Cesare Pavese, Lavorare stanca (Work's tiring), poems 1936; expanded edition 1943

Ruy Belo

EPIGRAPH TO OUR SOLITUDE

We cross our eyes at some corner
gave civilized our compliments:
they will call us will see contemporaries.

Ruy Belo

Relationship. That One Big Euphrates River

Ruy Belo (1933-1978) was born at S. João da Ribeira, a small village in Rio Maior. One of the most important poets in the portuguese contemporarie poetry. From his works: Aquele Grande Rio Eufrates (1961), Boca Bilingue (1966), Despeço-me da Terra da Alegria (1977).

Walt Whitman

POETS TO COME

Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!

Not to-day is to justify me and answer what am i for,

But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known,

Arouse! for you must justify me.

I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,

I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.

I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a casual look upon you

and then averts is face,

Leaving it to you to prove and define it,

Expecting the main things from you.


Walt Whitman, in Leaves of Grass


A place about Walt Whitman

http://www.whitmanarchive.org

Gingko

A winter morning at the garden. An old lady, a small old lady, stops walking. She looks up to the tree: A big yellow tree with a lot of tiny leaves, yellow clear leaves; and she smiles as if the first time she ever felt in her life.

Gingko Tree: the oldest tree knowned in the world.

The old lady kept it inside a mobile snapshot.

Koi Hui Sio

Two sites about Poetry

http://www.poetryproject.com

http://www.worldofpoetry.org

For more information about Ryokan:

http://www.poetseers.org/spiritual_and_devotional_poets/buddhist/ryokan/

http://www.yakrider.com/Poetry_n_Essays/Poetry/ryokan.htm