sejamos como se fôramos
num mundo que fosse: o Mundo.
MAKE-BELIEVE LULLABY
The world’s not worth the world,
my love.
I planted a sleep tree, and up
came twenty rosebushes.
If I cut myself on them all
and if all of them were stained
by a hazy blood issued
at the whim of the thorns,
it wasn’t anyone’s fault.
The world,
my love,
isn’t worth
our trouble, nor is an untroubled
face worth more than a pained one.
I learned long ago to laugh,
at what? At me? At nothing?
The world, worth nothing, isn’t valid.
Like the shadow in the valley,
life descends … and if some
sound rises out of that depth,
it’s not the shepherd’s shout
rounding up his sheep.
It’s not a flute or a chant
of disenchanted love.
It’s not a cricket’s sigh,
or the nighttime voice of streams,
or a mother calling her son.
It’s not the hiss of serpents
so entranced in the moonlight
they forget about biting.
It’s not a boy crying
for a man to take shape.
Nor is it the breathing
of soldiers or the sick,
of children in boarding schools
or nuns walled up in convents.
It’s not groups that, submersed
in the glaciers of half-sleep,
let themselves slip away,
less than a simple word,
less than an autumn leaf,
the particle of sound
that life contains, and death
contains, the barest record
of concentrated energy.
It’s not this, or anything.
It’s sound before music,
it’s what remains from non-
encounters, chance encounters,
mis-encounters, from mirages
that condense or dissolve
into other absurd representations.
The world has no meaning.
The world and its most moving
songs are still, and the speech
we suddenly hear
from the next room
is silence making an echo
and returning to being silence
in the all-surrounding darkness.
Silence: what is it saying?
What does the world say?
The world, my love, is sealed,
if it isn’t simply empty.
The world is perhaps. Period.
Perhaps it’s not even perhaps.
The world’s not worth our trouble,
but trouble doesn’t exist.
Let’s make believe, my love,
that we suffer and forget,
remember and enjoy,
select our memories
and unselect them whenever
they remember too much in us.
My love, let’s make believe
— but the believed doesn’t exist—
that everything’s as if it were,
or that, if it was, it wasn’t.
Let’s use words, my love.
Let’s make worlds: ideas.
Let’s leave the world to others,
since they want to consume it.
My love, let’s summon our strength
— but strength doesn’t exist—
and in the purest lie
of this self-belying world
let’s fashion our own image,
more illusory than anything,
since what could be more false
than to fancy oneself alive,
as if a dream could give us
the pleasure we dream of?
But the dream doesn’t exist.
And thus, my love, completely
awake, clear-minded, severe,
or with complete abandon,
letting ourselves wander
in the palm of time
— but time doesn’t exist —
let’s act as if we were
in a world that could be: the World.
PERGUNTAS
Numa incerta hora fria
perguntei ao fantasma
que força nos prendia,
ele a mim, que presumo
estar livre de tudo,
eu a ele, gasoso,
todavia palpável
na sombra que projeta
sobre meu ser inteiro:
um ao outro, cativos
desse mesmo princípio
ou desse mesmo enigma
que distrai ou concentra
e renova e matiza,
prolongando-a no espaço,
uma angústia do tempo.
Perguntei-lhe em seguida
o segredo de nosso
convívio sem contato,
de estarmos ali quedos,
eu em face do espelho,
e o espelho devolvendo
uma diversa imagem,
mas sempre evocativa
do primeiro retrato
que compõe de si mesma
a alma predestinada
a um tipo de aventura
terrestre, cotidiana.
Perguntei-lhe depois
por que tanto insistia
nos mares mais exíguos
em distribuir navios
desse calado irreal,
sem rota ou pensamento
de atingir qualquer porto,
propícios a naufrágio
mais que a navegação;
nos frios alcantis
de meu serro natal,
desde muito derruído,
em acordar memórias
de vaqueiros e vozes,
magras reses, caminhos
onde a bosta de vaca
é o único ornamento,
e o coqueiro-de-espinho
desolado se alteia.
Perguntei-lhe por fim
a razão sem razão
de me inclinar aflito
sobre restos de restos,
de onde nenhum alento
vem refrescar a febre
deste repensamento;
sobre esse chão de ruínas
imóveis, militares
na sua rigidez
que o orvalho matutino
já não banha ou conforta.
No voo que desfere,
silente e melancólico,
rumo da eternidade,
ele apenas responde
(se acaso é responder
a mistérios, somar-lhes
um mistério mais alto):
Amar, depois de perder.
QUESTIONS
One cold, uncertain hour
I asked the ghost
what force binds us,
him to me, whom I think of
as not bound to anything,
and me to him, gaseous
yet vividly felt
in the shadow he casts
over all my being:
reciprocal captives
of the same principle
(or the same enigma)
that distracts or focuses
and renews and refines
an anxiety of time,
prolonging it in space.
Next I asked him
the secret of our
intimacy without contact,
our quiet colloquy,
me facing the mirror
and the mirror returning
a likeness that’s different
yet always reminiscent
of the first image
a soul conceives for itself
when predestined to live
an earthly, everyday
sort of adventure.
Then I asked him
why he so insists
on such tiny seas,
on launching ships
with unreal hulls,
with no route or idea
of reaching any port,
ships fit for shipwreck
more than sailing;
why he insists on the cold
crags of the long-toppled
mountains of my childhood,
on arousing old memories
of cowherds, voices,
scrawny livestock, paths
where cow dung
was the only adornment,
and the desolate macaw palm
reigned tall.