WRITING TO THE ODDS
Go down.
Go down
even more.
This
place, or Tsárskoie Seló , or East Coker,
is always
dark after midnight.
Darkness
(lives) in the ground and walls and stone.
(You do
not yet know the darkness of the wind and water
and the
good savage never would have existed had he stepped
and seen
the ground and walls and stones)
Go down.
Go down even more.
The cold
has gone and each piece of place
is eaten
by time. It is a sorrowful place
Yesterday,
stone. Today, stone and never
the same.
Standing in front of the varied look and your descent.
Go down.
Go down
even more.
What does
it matter if the coat does not cover you well and
all the
varied looks are the same?
The beings
pass with their inhumanities and diseases, and many
are like
yours. The normal thing is that which moves away from them.
And it
makes a mockery, a buzz, or not even this
like the
new moon in the silence of dawn.
Go down.
Go down
even more.
Until not
even a tooth exists in the darknss.
Paltry!
Vile! Make yourself of cement and steel
from
places that do not exist.
Transmute
everything that they made you.
The great
civilization and culture. Spread yourself
through
time........
Today is one more day.
Go down.
Go down
even more.
Accid,
insidious until all the miracle is barefoot
– the
speaking, the creaking of stones
Any drop
of tear as a cold blade
The heat
of one and another hand.
Go down.
Go down
even more.
Talk to
the shadows, to the disqualified of the sidewalks
to the one
who agonizes in a house in flames, slag and alone.
Count the
crammed of skin and bones
and the
rotten flesh of the minor secrets
– The
smallest, the invisible, these centuries of History, Dust.
Go down.
Go down
even more.
With the
can, the ashes, the lighter and the spoon
the burnt lips
and the exposed blood
Be
minimum, acute, low-city.
Then, go
up
It's
oneself. Of cold and darkness and solitude.
Abyssal
and it can be Great.
- THE DURATION OF THE DESERT; trad. Tom Jones [o poema original/português pode ser lido aqui!]
*
að elska þig, undrun
vatn og salt eru augu mín.
auðn er að bíða þín.
[TÍMALENGD AUÐNARINNAR; trad. para o islandês de Luciano Dutra]
te amar, assombro
água e sal são meus olhos.
deserto é te esperar.
[A DURAÇÃO DO DESERTO, Nina Rizzi; Ed. Patuá, 2014.]
- João Victor Cheng (nome brasileiro de meu aluno chinês), fez uma leitura do poema em sua língua-mãe, que lindeza pra se verouvir :)
