The silence afterwards

Try to be done now
with the provocations and sales statistics,
the Sunday breakfasts and incinerators,
the military parades, the architecture competitions
and the triple rows of traffic lights.
Get through it and be done
with the party preparations and marketing analyses
for it’s too late,
it’s far too late,
be done with it and come home
to the silence afterwards
that meets you like a hot spurt of blood against your forehead
and like the thunder on the way
and the chimes of mighty bells
that make your eardrums quiver
for words are no more,
there are no more words,
from now on everything will speak
with the voices of stones and trees.

The silence that lives in the grass
on the underside of each blade
and in the blue intervals between the stones.
The silence
that follows after the shots and the bird-song.
The silence
that lays a blanket over the one who is dead
and that waits on the stairs until everyone is gone.
The silence
that nestles like a fledgling between your hands,
your only friend.

Rolf Jacobsen

CONTAM DE CLARICE LISPECTOR

Um dia, Clarice Lispector
intercambiava com amigos
dez mil anedotas de morte,
e do que tem de sério e circo.

Nisso, chegam outros amigos,
vindos do último futebol,
comentando o jogo, recontando-o,
refazendo-o, de gol a gol.

Quando o futebol esmorece,
abre a boca um silêncio enorme
e ouve-se a voz de Clarice:
Vamos voltar a falar na morte?

João Cabral de Melo Neto

Let’s suppose you were able, every night, to dream any dream you wanted to dream. Naturally, as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all of your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure during your sleep. And after several nights you would say, ‘Well, that was pretty great, but now let’s have a surprise. Let’s have a dream that isn’t under control, where something is going to happen to me and I don’t know what that something will be.’ Then you would get more and more adventurous and you would make further and further gambles on what you would dream. And finally, you would dream where you are now.

Alan Watts, The Dream Of Life.

Ninguém se mata pelo amor de uma mulher. Matamo-nos porque um amor, não importa qual, nos revela a nós mesmos na nossa nudez, na nossa miséria, no nosso estado inerme, no nosso nada.

Cesare Pavese

Certainly I am poor and up to this day have never lacked in failure, but life without success can also be beautiful.

Robert Walser, Girlfriends, Ghosts, and Other Stories.

Ninguém tem o direito de se comportar comigo como se me conhecesse.

Robert Walser

Fazem-me falta
todos os cigarros
que deixei de fumar
desde que deixei de fumar.

Enquanto não os fumo
lembro o gesto, o sabor, o odor,
— a suma passividade
de quem vê ruir o mundo
sem se comprometer.

If we walk in the country
On a Winter sunny day
We feel happy to be alive
Especially if it rained
The night before.
A bright and sunny day in the Winter
And not a rain cloud in the sky

There is a joy that comes to light
When sunny days appear

A bold sense of warmth
Each time the skies are wide open
A moment’s peace, a sacred calm
And stillness, all day through.

We survive the death of our parents and that's how it should be. A particular freedom sets in, heavy and surrounded by silence and it is difficult to believe how easily we adhere to it. Life goes on, as voracious and fast as ever. What changes when everything should have changed? We are still afraid, we still laugh, we still love, and beyond fear, laughter or love we find our own finitude clinging to an irrevocable present.

Esta sólida delimitação do corpo humano é aterradora. O sentimento do perfeito desamparo. (...) A estranheza, o inexplicável no facto de não ter sucumbido, de ser guiado em silêncio leva-me ao absurdo de dizer «Eu, por mim, há muito que me teria perdido». Eu, por mim.

Franz Kafka, Diários.

eu durmo sestas

no meu sofá

deixo o gato

deitar-se sobre mim

e uno a minha respiração à sua

enquanto escuto

o restolhar da nespereira

diante da casa

nesses momentos

não penso nem reajo

a nada

constante ou inconstante 

dou-me totalmente

para dentro da noite

torpe e corruptível

como um sapo no charco

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my
dreams.

Se tivesse eu os panos bordados dos céus,
Entremeados com luz dourada e de prata,
O azul e os panos esbatidos e escuros
Da noite e da luz e da meia luz,
Espalharia os panos debaixo dos teus pés:
Mas eu, sendo pobre, tenho somente os meus sonhos;
Eu espalhei os meus sonhos debaixo dos teus pés;
Caminha com cuidado porque caminhas sobre os meus sonhos.

W. B. Yeats, He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven.

Every word has its consequences.
Every silence too.

Jean-Paul Sartre

Os medíocres são sempre os outros. A nossa vida — sobretudo a interior — jamais é banal, vulgar, mas sim rara e extraordinária. É em nós que se encontra a beleza do mundo, nunca a fealdade. De outro modo, como poderíamos viver connosco? O sistema é esse, a integração exige esforço e não podemos ser inconvenientes. Pensa positivo filho, pensa positivo. Adormece sem insónias, sem medo, sem imaginação. A liberdade que não transgride e que não te deixa em pedaços, inseguro e inquieto, não te deixa ver de quantas fantasias és feito.

Ex umbris et imaginabus in veritatem

Tell me you are looking for me
While away
Because I am
Without knowing
If the earth stopped spinning
And if time suddenly blossomed
Using lavish words
I can't hear.
Such is your silence:
A loss of intention,
A dead break,
A luxurious, hard, isolated
Language.