TRADUÇÕES DA QUARENTENA - 18 Mary Oliver

Instruções para viver uma vida:

Presta atenção.
Maravilha-te.
Fala disso.
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........
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DIA DE VERÃO
Quem fez o mundo?
Quem fez o cisne, e o urso preto?
Quem fez o gafanhoto?
Este gafanhoto, quer dizer –
o que saltou da erva,
o que está a comer açúcar na minha mão,
o que move as mandíbulas para a frente e para trás em vez de para cima e para baixo –
que olha em volta com os seus enormes e complicados olhos.
Agora ergue os pálidos antebraços e lava meticulosamente a cara.
Agora estala as asas e paira para longe.
Não sei exatamente o que é uma oração.
Mas sei estar atenta, sei como cair
na erva, como ajoelhar na erva,
como ser ociosa e abençoada, como vaguear através dos campos,
que é o que tenho feito todo o dia.
Diz-me, que mais devia eu ter feito?
Não morre tudo por fim, e demasiado cedo?
Diz-me, o que planeias fazer
com a tua única selvagem e preciosa vida?
.
.
........
.
.
Uma vez alguém que eu amava deu-me
uma caixa cheia de escuridão.

Levei anos a perceber
que também isso era uma prenda.



Mary Oliver (EUA, 1935-2019)
(trad. Cristina Tavares /José Pinto de Sá)

How I Go to the Woods

How I Go to the Woods

Ordinarily I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable.

I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours.

Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds, until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost unhearable sound of the roses singing.

If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love you very much.

Mary Oliver, Swan:Poems and Prose Poems

I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing, especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed.

Mary Oliver

CT, Objectos do Céu Profundo, 2017

Attention

CT, 2015


Attention is the beginning of devotion.

Mary Oliver, Upstream

Rainy J

José Sá, Maputo, Setembro, 2016

All eternity is in the moment.

Mary Oliver

I did think

Joan Mitchell

I did think, let’s go about this slowly.
This is important. This should take
some really deep thought. We should take
small thoughtful steps.

But, bless us, we didn’t.

Mary Oliver, Felicity

José no ar

José Sá, Barberton Valley (Mpumalanga, África do Sul), 
setembro 2016

Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields...Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness. 

Mary Oliver

Vivian e Mary

Vivian Maier, Autoretrato

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean -
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down -
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now se snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't known exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
witch is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and to soon?
Tell me, what is it your plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?


Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, vol.1 (Beacon Press)

it is a serious thing

CT, the haunted colour, junho 2016

it is a serious thing 

just to be alive 
on this fresh morning 
in this broken world.


Mary Oliver, Red Bird

the unimaginable

Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.

Mary Oliver

Paula e Mary

Paula Modersohn-Becker, Moonlit Landscape, c.1900

I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.

Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around

As though with your arms open.

Mary Oliver

Mary e K.k.DePaul

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift. 

Mary Oliver, Thirst 

K.k.DePaul, Abracadabra, from the series Only Child

Mary e K.k.DePaul

Listen—are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

Mary Oliver, West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems

K.k.DePaul, Duality, from the series Only Child

When it’s over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement,
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems

When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. 

Mary Oliver

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

Mary Oliver

Come with me
into the field of sunflowers.

Mary Oliver

Tolice? Não, não é

Às vezes passo um dia inteiro a tentar contar as folhas de uma única árvore. Para o fazer tenho de trepar ramo após ramo e de tomar nota dos números num pequeno caderno. Pelo que, do ponto de vista deles, suponho que seja razoável que os meus amigos digam: que tolice! Lá está ela de novo com a cabeça nas nuvens.

Mas não é assim. Claro que há um momento em que tenho de desistir, mas nessa altura já eu estou meio enlouquecida com tal milagre - a abundância das folhas, a quietude dos ramos, o fracasso dos meus intentos. É quando dou por mim a rugir às gargalhadas, cheia de glória terrestre, neste lugar importante e delicioso.

Mary Oliver (em http://arspoetica-lp.blogspot.pt)