The Bustle in a House
The Morning after Death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted opon Earth –
The Sweeping up the Heart
And putting Love away
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity –
—Emily Dickinson (via Poetry Foundation)
The Bustle in a House
The Morning after Death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted opon Earth –
The Sweeping up the Heart
And putting Love away
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity –
—Emily Dickinson (via Poetry Foundation)
(…)
One Morning
the fox came down the hill, glittering and confident,
and didn’t see me—and I thought:
so this is the world.
I’m not in it.
It is beautiful.
—Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems Volume One, Beacon Press, 1992
Soube da existência de Fumiko Nakajō ao ter visto o filme “Para Sempre Mulher” de Kinuyo Tanaka. Foi uma poetisa japonesa que morreu em 1954 com apenas 31 anos e que escrevia um estilo de poesia chamado Tanka.
No Japão, é uma forma tradicional de poesia já com mais de 1.300 anos e ainda hoje respeitada. Originalmente escrita numa linha só, actualmente consiste em cinco linhas com um padrão silábico 5-7-5-7-7, num total de 31 sílabas. Ao contrário dos Haiku concisos e frequentemente focados na natureza, estes poemas têm um carácter mais pessoal, expressando sentimentos profundos, reflexões e experiências. Combinando frequentemente imagens com emoção, permitindo aos poetas explorar temas como o amor, a perda e a beleza, de forma breve mas evocativa.
Nas praias que são o rosto branco das amadas mortas
Deixarei que o teu nome se perca repetido
Mas espera-me
Pois por mais longos que sejam os caminhos
Eu regresso.
—Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, Coral, 1950
When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.
When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.
When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.
Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.
And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.
—Maya Angelou, Family Friend Poems