By PEDRO DE SOUZA*
six sonnets
1.
The wind brought the dust. The water dwindles.
In the cloudless sky hovers a chimerical sun.
Round, fat, far, he hurts us co'os
his bulging eyes. the bad tongues
they parade with their suits. anti-hysterics
are bought in pubs where the language
run wild. boils and bumps
line up at the temples. cadaveric
dogs bark moons, and meanwhile
the dust floats. undying,
the dirt is softened, aware
of the smoke that alms brings with it.
Finally an old broomstick
sweeps away the dogs, the poems and the beggars.
2.
The yellowed leaves together
to the black earth I tread, firm and serious,
as one who treads the limits of the empire
of the night. Demarcated, the dead
blend into the landscape, disjointed
companions in the placid mystery
of silence. full of funeral
pendors, I go to the linden tree and ask her:
In these equal tombs, under your fronds,
does the decayed solvency lie in the enigma?
The wind rumbles, and the tree replies:
Death does not enlighten you at all;
you are the same, because where
you look for death, you find only life.
3.
In the intangible stained glass windows of churches
of yore I see mutilated eyes
of an exhausted god. Useless, all shout
of discredit: the silent god gasps
in these celia tints and foams
in the brutal and forgetful doorways.
Between dull rust and boredom
deep down, float your blessings
prayers: Believe me, humans, believe!
I have you in my plans! my zeal
it is infinite and sustains these walls!
Love the stone love that I exhale!
But we, atheists and believers without knowing it,
we only know how to rhyme their sighs.
4.
To be of stone and earth and never again
to love to suffer: that is all. have in arms
not measured nor meager muscles
loves, but only the abysmal ones
dew lulls. be enough,
be good, be good. In the lasso lakes
collect durations: sleep laps
and wake mountain ranges. in the fleeting
trip to see the wind (wind
the wind blows) and forget about the roots
of pain of every flesh. In the storms,
be the eyes of beasts and stars
reap the vertigo. And happy
not just see the mountains, but lick them.
5.
The nameless child in me slept.
She slept serenely, deaf to the refrains
from my lyre. I wanted the bad guys
my singing lifted her up, but not a thousand
songs achieved this agreement.
I realized that your sleep was my temple
and that rest is everything. I don't contemplate
the child's eyes, but its slow
uncurl. your skin
flat guards the silence of the plains
uninhabited. My job is that he
don't crumble. Childhood goes, mature,
planting in me its curls, and compels
May I preserve the amplitude that murmurs in me.
6.
“Alles ist weit –, und nirgends schließt sich der Kreis“ (Rilke)
Everything is distance – and the circle closes
nowhere. Of the stars we only have left
a sea of calm points, pure crevice
of the broken doors. every loophole
of touch is alien to us, and nothing lets
own yourself. The forest is cultivated
of the calls, the modest ones are harvested
fruits of indifference. in the plums
and apples and cherries don't shake
a river - the pulps are never the branches.
We circle, we plant, we circle
and we reap chance, not life.
Sometimes our blood flows: skin
of skins, we don't know how to be with him.
*Pedro de Souza é Writer.
