sexta-feira, 13 de agosto de 2010

Amarras

Agosto vai a meio mas não vejo razão este ano para te salvar. Talvez porque este Agosto não aperte. Antes, desperte. Ou liberte. Espero bem ter acertado no teu estado de alma.

Mas nem por isso devemos deixar Agosto, esse mês pouco dado a lirismos, que ficam para os primeiros dias do Outono, ante as urgências sensuais. Sem um poema.

E porque John Burnside tem quase tudo o que a existência precisa, apanhemo-lo a meio do seu poema Ports, quando inicia a sua terceira parte, Moorings.

kinship of flesh with flesh

When we go walking
early
at the furled edge of the sea

we find dark webs of crabmeat
herring-bone
wet
diaphragms of stranded jellyfish

spring water mingles with salt beneath the church
where Anstruther's dead are harboured in silent loam
sea-litter washes the wall where the graveyard ends
a scatter of shells and hairweed
and pebbles of glass
made smooth
in the sway of the tide.

From here
amongst the angel-headed stones
we see the town entire:
the shiplike kirk
the snooker hall above the library

the gift-shop on the corner
windows packed
with trinkets of glass
and pictures of towns like this

a rabble of gulls
the scarlet and cherry red
of lifebelts and cars
the bus that will wait by the dock
for minutes
before it returns
to Leven.

By evening the harbour belongs
to men at work.
They're swaddled in orange or lime-green
overalls
their faces seathed
in perspex: crouched to the blue
of their torches
they are innocent
of presence
flashes and sparks
dancing in the darkness of their masks
as if in emptiness.

Sometimes we stand in the cold
and watch them for hours
- the way
they bend into their flames
like celebrants
immune to everything
that moves or falls around them
isolates
suspended in the constancy
of fire.

This time of year
it's night by five o'clock
and as we walk
we harbour something new:
the old pain
neutral and stilled in our blood
like a shipwreck observed from a distance
or one of those
underwater shapes we sometimes glimpse
through hairweed and clouded sand
a shifting form
that catches the eye for a moment
then disappears.

At dusk
above the street
above the painted
shopfronts and roofs
and children walking home in twos and threes
it starts to snow.
At one end of the quay
a boat is docked
- it's mostly fishing vessels here
but this
is tusk-white
with a terracotta keel
a pleasure boat
a hope pursued through years
of casual loss.

It's unattended now
but you could guess
its owner from the writing on the hull
a stencilled row of characters that spell
against the painted wood
the word
S E R E N I T Y.

In daylight it would seem
almost absurd:
too sentimental
gauche
inaccurate
a weekend sailor's image of the sea

but now
as snow descends into the rings
of torchlight
and the sky above the harbour
darkens
it is only what it seems:

a name for something wanted
and believed
no more or less correct than anyhing
we use to make a dwelling in the world.

Eis o que tenho para te dizer. Neste Agosto.

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