HOMERO
(...)
E um cão, que ali jazia, arrebitou as orelhas.
Era Argos, o cão do infeliz Ulisses; o cão que ele próprio
criara, mas nunca dele tirou proveito, pois antes disso partiu
para a sagrada Ílion. Em dias passados, os mancebos tinham levado
o cão à caça, para perseguir cabras selvagens, veados e lebres.
Mas agora jazia e ninguém lhe ligava, pois o dono estava ausente:
jazia no esterco de mulas e bois, que se amontoava junto às portas,
até que o os servos de Ulisses o levassem como estrume para o campo.
Aí jazia o cão Argos, coberto das carraças dos cães.
Mas quando se apercebeu que Ulisses estava perto,
começou a abanar a cauda e baixou ambas as orelhas;
só que não tinha força para se aproximar do dono.
Então Ulisses olhou para o lado e limpou uma lágrima.
Escondendo-a discretamente de Eumeu, assim lhe disse:
"Eumeu, que coisa estranha que esse cão esteja aqui no esterco.
Pois é um lindo cão, embora eu não consiga perceber ao certo
se tem rapidez que condiga com o seu belo aspecto,
ou se será apenas um daqueles cães que aparecem às mesas,
que os príncipes alimentam somente pela sua figura."
Foi então, ó porqueiro Eumeu, que lhe deste esta resposta:
"É na verdade o cão de um homem que morreu.
Se ele tivesse o aspecto e as capacidades que tinha
quando deixou Ulisses, ao partir para Tróia,
admirar-te-ias logo com a sua rapidez e a sua força.
Não havia animal no bosque, que ele perseguisse,
que dele conseguisse fugir: e de faro era também excelente.
Mas está agora nesta desgraça: o dono morreu longe,
e as mulheres indiferentes não lhe dão quaisquer cuidados.
Pois os servos, quando os amos não lhes dão ordens,
não querem fazer o trabalho como deve ser:
Zeus que vê ao longe retira ao homem metade do seu valor
quando chega para ele o dia da sua escravização."
Assim dizendo, entrou no palácio bem construído
e foi logo juntar-se na sala aos orgulhosos pretendentes.
Mas Argos foi tomado pelo negro destino da morte,
depois que viu Ulisses, ao fim de vinte anos.
(excerto do canto XVII da Odisseia, tradução de Frederico Lourenço, livros Cotovia, 2003)
WILLIAM BLAKE
The Tiger
TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?
Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
[a propósito deste poema, aconselho o mais recente número (o 17, relativo a Outubro de 2005) da revista Relâmpago, da Fundação Luís Miguel Nava, onde se podem encontrar oito versões em português, devidamente comentadas por Manuel Portela]
D. H. LAWRENCE
Snake
A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before
me.
He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of
the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
i o And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.
Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second comer, waiting.
He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.
And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.
But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?
Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.
And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him!
And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.
He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.
And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.
I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.
I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste.
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.
And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.
And I thought of the albatross
And I wished he would come back, my snake.
For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.
And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.
Taormina, 1923
RAINER MARIA RILKE
A pantera
De percorrer as grades o seu olhar cansou-se
e não retém mais nada lá no fundo,
como se a jaula de mil barras fosse
e além das barras não houvesse mundo.
O andar elástico dos passos fortes dentro
da ínfima espiral assim traçada
é uma dança da força em torno ao centro
de uma grande vontade atordoada.
Mas por vezes a cortina da pupila
ergue-se sem ruído - e uma imagem então
vai pelos membros em tensão tranquila
até desvanecer no coração.
(tradução de Vasco Graça Moura, em apêndice a Os Sonetos a Orfeu, Quetzal editores, 1994)
ANTÓNIO OSÓRIO
CAVALO
Um dia chegará
que alguém se mostre
agradecido e diga:
- Entre
e coma à nossa mesa.
(de A Raiz Afectuosa, 1972)
JORGE DE SENA
(...) mas creio firmemente que, se há anjos-da-guarda, o meu tem asas verdes, e sabe, para consolar-me, nas horas mais amargas, os mais rudes palavrões dos sete mares.
(últimas palavras de Homenagem ao Papagaio Verde, in Os Grão-Capitães (contos), 1976)
[O Elogio da Calvície é uma obra do bispo Sinésio de Cirene, traduzido por Manuel João Gomes, Autor do Almanaque dos Espelhos, ambos editados pela & etc]
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