light gazing, ışığa bakmak

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

já na quinta versão de post, agora fico-me pelo rio

Quero molhar os pés neste rio, ou noutro qualquer.


Fishing on the Susquehanna in July
Billy Collins

I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna
or on any river for that matter
to be perfectly honest.

Not in July or any month
have I had the pleasure--if it is a pleasure--
of fishing on the Susquehanna.

I am more likely to be found
in a quiet room like this one--
a painting of a woman on the wall,

a bowl of tangerines on the table--
trying to manufacture the sensation
of fishing on the Susquehanna.

There is little doubt
that others have been fishing
on the Susquehanna,

rowing upstream in a wooden boat,
sliding the oars under the water
then raising them to drip in the light.

But the nearest I have ever come to
fishing on the Susquehanna
was one afternoon in a museum in Philadelphia

when I balanced a little egg of time
in front of a painting
in which that river curled around a bend

under a blue cloud-ruffled sky,
dense trees along the banks,
and a fellow with a red bandanna

sitting in a small, green
flat-bottom boat
holding the thin whip of a pole.

That is something I am unlikely
ever to do, I remember
saying to myself and the person next to me.

Then I blinked and moved on
to other American scenes
of haystacks, water whitening over rocks,

even one of a brown hare
who seemed so wired with alertness
I imagined him springing right out of the frame.

---
Billy Collins, um dos meus favoritos, com os compliments do ex-sogro.



Gostei de ver e achei excelente ideia esta série de animações feitas sobre poemas de Billy Collins. Nove, ao todo, para ver aqui.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

White birds

I WOULD that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea:
We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can pass by and flee;
And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky,
Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that never may die.

A weariness comes from those dreamers, dew-dabbled, the lily and rose,
Ah, dream not of them, my beloved, the flame of the meteor that goes,
Or the flame of the blue star that lingers hung low in the fall of the dew:
For I would we were changed to white birds on the wandering foam—I and you.

I am haunted by numberless islands, and many a Danaan shore,
Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more:
Soon far from the rose and the lily, the fret of the flames, would we be,
Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea.

Ana V. said...

Obrigada pelo poema, Tozz. Sabes que gosto de Yeats (embora seja um pouco romântico de mais, mas era a época, e o romantismo irlandês não fica mal). Beijo, Ana

Anonymous said...

Era só para molhar os pés. Neste caso, na espuma do mar.
And white birds can be old birds.
;)

 
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