tragicoptimist

The simplest, most common words,
Everyday pocket change,
Transform into the language of another world:
Some sun is enough, the eyes of a poet,
Skimming, to illuminate them.

[ José Saramago, "As palavras são novas", Os poemas possíveis, 1966 ]

Others will say, in verse, other reasons
maybe more useful, more urgent.
These, here, don’t change nature,
Suspended between two negations.
Now, invent art and manner
Of joining chance and certainty,
Whether it take, or not, an entire life.

Like who gnaws their fingernails raw.

[ José Saramago, "As palavras são novas", Os poemas possíveis, 1966 ]

I want this poem needless and dry,
Brief snap of bitten stem
Or creaking floor where I don’t dance.
I want to pass beyond with downcast eyes,
Crushed with sorrow and silence,
Because everything is said and I’m tired.

[ José Saramago, "As palavras são novas", Os poemas possíveis, 1966 ]

I was. But what I was now I don’t remember:
One thousand layers of dust, veils,
these forty unequal faces,
So marked by time and storm gales.

I am. But what I am is so little:
Frog out of pond, that jumped,
and in that jump, the highest he could,
He the air of another world crushed.

We’ll see, if there’s something to see, what I’ll be:
A face recomposed before the end,
A batrachian song, even raucous,
A life that goes well or misspent.

[ José Saramago, "As palavras são novas", Os poemas possíveis, 1966 ]

And when do the protests placate
Of blood compressed in arteries?
And when rest on the table remnants,
Dentures and miseries?

And when do animals tremble of cold,
looking at the new shadow castrated?
And when in the desert of shudder
We gamble against our cards and dice?

And when are we tired of questions,
and answers we have not, even screaming?
And when to hopes together here
We cannot say how or when?

[ José Saramago, "As palavras são novas", Os poemas possíveis, 1966 ]