Aeternus

Poemas em Inglês por Gerard Galloway

I

A PRE-CAROL

(Christmas, 1962)

Joseph was a handsome man

And all the people loved him,

The scamps and dusty children ran

To watch the curls of wood,

Mothers with their proud pans

Thought very highly of him

And as their spider fingers spun,

The girls cast love about him.

Mary was a lovely girl

As clear-eyed as the day

So roses grew more fanciful

When she had passed their way

She scrubbed up in the temple hall

And then, as she knelt to pray,

Darkening men saw in her eyes

Their gold ambition grey

Mary and tall Joseph, her friend,

Were folk as fair as God can send

But, while their eyes and voices made

The dint of love where’er they laid,

Like things of beauty put aside

To be more lovely when they died,

They wrapped their loveliness around

For God to find in holy ground.

II

BIRTHDAY GREETING

I wonder can a birthday rose

Be better brought in verse or prose,

Or, better still, in living flower

With all her perfume’s crushing power?

How real is real when real dies

And all her lively moisture dries;

When best of wishes, splashed upon

The flower’s heart become as wan

With all the theft of passing hours

As does the rose herself,

For memory fades as fast as flowers.

See then, I’ve brought you both; the rose

In all her beauty soon to close

And, by her side, some lines of verse

To carry her and be her hearse,

To be her crystal coffin where

All may stare and see how fair

She was some little time ago.

I didn’t forget you but I know

Unless I use this living power

Of verse, I can’t prevent

Your memory closing like a flower.

Rio, 1963.

III

VENI CREATOR SPIRITUS

Spirit of God, Creator Guest,

Our thinking lacks your aid;

Unleash your cooling wings around

These fevered heads you made.

The Paraclete, they said, a bird

To wheel on heaven’s bay;

Firebird, lovebird, a phoenix that

Can never burn away.

Channel our grey, unlucky ore

Through thy transfusing fires;

Pour off aeonial metal from

The slag of brief desires.

From you, seven gifts, you are the strong

Finger of God’s right hand;

His promise that the human mind

Shall glitter and expand.

Then fire our hatred with your torch;

Pour love upon our hearts;

Grasp firmly in immortal calm

Our frightened fits and starts.

We curb and kill to keep our culture

Clean of the alien kiss;

Oh let your sweet variety show

The filthiness of this;

That ignorance, hunger and painare where

The real foe lies hidden –

All things by which Man’s faculty

For loving is forbidden.

Then make us know through knowing you

The Father and the Son,

And teach us how your essence thickens

Three truths into One.

Our shout shall fanfare round the Father;

He’ll divide our breath

In silver scarves for thee and for

That Boy who cheered Death.

Rio,1965.

REQUIEM FOR A FAMOUS POETESS

Our requiem, like this lizard,

May glide for a space

Over the regulation crags

In sugared marble,

We the funerary men,

Come to confine these

Shattered white coals

In a hissing frame

Of black basalt.

The soul of this poetess

Can hear just a few

Of the more exalted notes

As now and then

A voice more despairingly

Challenges with unearthly

Aimiability the importen

Wrath of his fellows’

Dies illa, in favilla

Listen – where you fare –

Thrust up a green

Shoor from the unseen

Ear of Death and her

How

Little we know you,

How less we know

Even of each other,

How nothing we know

Of our own selves –

We the makers of this

Memorial kiss –

And some time after

The priest has chattered

Crumbs of laughter

And soiled his fingertips

Know now at long last,

After the storm of jokes

Is come and passed,

How rarely the wrench

Of a voice’s strap

Can make living Death

React

Living Death?

Yes, like a lover winning

(But never for keeps)

Between all-sinning

Thighs

Like this sullen bird

Blooming thickly

From the dark curd

Of all my skies

Like the gross weed

With terrible speed

Through rock that’s cracked

By children’s cries

The irrigant chill

From that ancestral

Spout in a garden,

Whirling where later

The turning snails

Seal up their homes

Against Jack Frost

With a fastening plug

Of green and frothy

Mucus – like that

Green stone rolled

To the door of the tomb

And let us now

- OREMUS –

Be morbid and disentangle

Greedy pride

From the lost beauty:

How much of her art

Was made from our fear?

The tower of her name

Put up by black men

Naked and nameless

In the Rio sun?

- OREMUS –

And let us now

Seal up all things

Which have opened

Heaven-pulling wings,

Seal them up

With nails,

Ornamental-headed

Bolts and screws,

With the tacky brown juice of

Decomposition,

With rime

And with gristle,

Smegma, wax

And dull bandages

Let us disentangle

The actor from his art

There is a daughter to the wedding

Or the poet with her word;

There’s a perfume to the stink of this

Rude Death that has occurred;

There’s a coarn of a continuance

Like spears on the land;

Tehre are orders to be given even

Black hearts understand

And she was the right;

Her foot was planted

Straight on the path

Leading to a bold delight

This poet is

With

Of

And for,

Out of

Through and

In spite of

Death

Near the grave

This lizard cocks

Her glinting brain;

Our prayer –

In Paradisum – breaks

Her careful chain

And off she plies

Like an intent surmise

Through the acqueous air,

Over the uneven

And terrible terrain

We sang that a trumpet should scatter

Weird sound through the burial ground;

That Death shall gape in Nature’s face

When surprising last uprising

Reinstates our fallen faith

Hélas! So many French

Figments and fragments

Of involuntary vision

Fall in between

The missing teeth

Of intention and act,

Thank God!

So much irrelevant

Turmoil and pain

Like this Imperial Palm,

Confining her surrender

To the vicious wind

Within a zone

Of multitudinously various

Traffic and mutation

Making my poor head

Eddy with implication

And the way these curtains

Answer their tethering

With all the sick umbrage

Of imprisoned kings

And this is what it is

To be any kind of poet;

To let the chance of life

Vie with the dance of Death,

To flick the loose mozaic phrase

Into and out of astounding rays

Until the final craftsman come

To concentrate with freezing gum

This lovely craze

May she rest then, this poet,

In Peace, this dear poet,

In a nest

Rounded from the wisps

Of thoughtless glancing,

Made from the moment when

The constant pandemonium

Of dogs and mosquitoes,

Samba on the mountainside,

The low howl of offices,

Penetrates like a sting.

May she rest in this form

Shaped by the bent wing

Of any other brief brother,

Cupped by his breat,

May her fame feed

On the best of words –

The only need.

(Rio,1964)

IV

A Satyr once in Arcady

Chanced upon a sleeping girl

On whom the warm bloom, down

From a sailing chestnut tree

Fell to amaze the asphodel.

His pranking foot was chilled

With a stab; through fingers reft

Of skill, his silver flute, like blossom

Cuffed away by the lord wind,

Spilled from the lips it filled.

He stood a little while untouching,

Coursing all her sleeping cry

Through brakes and lakes of breast

And thigh. He wept. How might such

A child be won and kept by the wild?

From off the turf he pricked his flute

And set it to his lips, but softly,

And warding all the notes, he blew. Aloft

Like a nun’s veil, his meek tune

Hung to repair the gaping noon.

The poor satyr couldn’t make up his mind

Whether he wished the girl to wake

And see him, of fashion in her dream

Some firm boy with a lilyloin, come

To wring her pollen with his tongue.

And the child, like a slow flower

Marking off the morning, seemed to smile.

An ache of love rioted, deep down

In the satyr’s tough roots. Wild the flute

And the slain rocks whirred with pain.

No heron, kneeling by the hump

Of the near-rolling wave

Prayed ever such a hopeless prayer

And shriller rang the cry until

The pale girl woke with the wailing.

Her eyes blue, saw the satyr

Like a course throune crouching there

And shrieked. He fled. From that time on

She never found a thing to love

Nor any joy in man or boy.