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Do espelho, aceno
A boca banguela
A boca torta
A perna rota
O pé sem bota.

Quem acena é um velho e
Num só corpo gordo e descarnado
De olho baço
De ventre redondo
De peito de pombo

Reúne em si
Uma nuvem de muxoxos
Uma rede de queixumes
Um só gemido, surdo como um trovão
E o sorriso dum natimorto

Pulo

A água da fonte, altaneia
querendo dançar com a chuva que
cai

imagens na irrelevante janela de um veículo qualquer

A canção do Monstro do Lago Ness

Sssnnnwhuffffll?
Hnwhuffl hhnnwfl hnfl hfl?
Gdroblboblhobngbl gbl gl g g g g glbgl.
Drublhaflablhaflubhafgabhaflhafl fl fl –
gm grawwwww grf grawf awfgm graw gm.
Hovoplodok – doplodovok – plovodokot-doplodokosh?
Splgraw fok fok splgrafhatchgabrlgabrl fok splfok!
Zgra kra gka fok!
Grof grawff gahf?
Gombl mbl bl –
blm plm,
blm plm,
blm plm,
blp.

- Edwin Morgan 

O Tell Me The Truth About Love

Some say love's a little boy, 
And some say it's a bird, 
Some say it makes the world go round,
Some say that's absurd, 
And when I asked the man next door, 
Who looked as if he knew, 
His wife got very cross indeed, 
And said it wouldn't do.

Does it look like a pair of pyjamas, 
Or the ham in a temperance hotel? 
Does its odour remind one of llamas, 
Or has it a comforting smell? 
Is it prickly to touch as a hedge is, 
Or soft as eiderdown fluff? 
Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges? 
O tell me the truth about love.

Our history books refer to it 
In cryptic little notes, 
It's quite a common topic on
The Transatlantic boats; 
I've found the subject mentioned in
Accounts of suicides, 
And even seen it scribbled on
The backs of railway guides.

Does it howl like a hungry Alsatian, 
Or boom like a military band? 
Could one give a first-rate imitation
On a saw or a Steinway Grand? 
Is its singing at parties a riot? 
Does it only like Classical stuff? 
Will it stop when one wants to be quiet? 
O tell me the truth about love.

I looked inside the summer-house; 
It wasn't even there; 
I tried the Thames at Maidenhead, 
And Brighton's bracing air. 
I don't know what the blackbird sang, 
Or what the tulip said; 
But it wasn't in the chicken-run, 
Or underneath the bed.

Can it pull extraordinary faces? 
Is it usually sick on a swing? 
Does it spend all its time at the races, 
or fiddling with pieces of string? 
Has it views of its own about money? 
Does it think Patriotism enough? 
Are its stories vulgar but funny? 
O tell me the truth about love.

When it comes, will it come without warning
Just as I'm picking my nose? 
Will it knock on my door in the morning, 
Or tread in the bus on my toes? 
Will it come like a change in the weather? 
Will its greeting be courteous or rough? 
Will it alter my life altogether? 
O tell me the truth about love. 



-WH Auden

Nine One Word Poems

A Far Cool Beautiful Thing, Vanishing
      blue


The Dear Green Plaice
     Glasgow


Homage to Zukofsky
      the


The Dilemmas of a Horn
     roncesvalles


Ada Nada Paradada
     dom


Lattice, Lettuce, Ladders
     vasarely


Wet Dry Wet Dry Wet Asdic
     dolphins


Dangerous Glory
     morning


O Vapour-trails! O Water-melons!
     voznesensky

-Edwin Morgan

Para punir os homens

Para punir os homens
por seus numerosos pecados

de pele pura

e cabelos pretos e longos

eu fui feita

-Yosano Akiko 

(Traduzido por Diogo Kaupatez)

Desiderata

deseo lo que no tengo
(no tu cuerpo que abrazo)
deseo tu deseo

deseo que desees lo que no tienes
(no mi cuerpo que abrazas)
deseo que desees mi deseo

no deseo a quien no desea mi deseo
no deseo a quien no desea que yo desee su deseo




-Ulalume Gonzáles de León

Icosasphere

'In Buckinghamshire hedgerows
   the birds nesting in the merged green density,
      weave little bits of string and moths and feathers
   and thistledown,
          in parabolic concentric curves'
   and, working for concavity, leave spherical feats
    of rare efficiency;
       whereas through lack of integration,

avid for someone's fortune,
   three were slain and ten committed perjury,
      six died, two killed themselves, and two paid
    fines for risks they'd run.
            But then there is the icosasphere
   in which at last we have steel-cutting at its
                  summit of economy,
       since twenty triangles conjoined, can wrap one

ball or double-rounded shell
   with almost no waste, so geometrically
       neat, it's an icosahedron.  Would the engineers
                    making one,
            or Mr. J. O. Jackson tell us
   how the Egyptians could have set up seventy-eight-
                   foot solid granite vertically?
       We should like to know how that was done.



-Marianne Moore

Grey rain

The elemental joy of rain
Falls in thick sheets upon my chest
A sensual, lambent cold;
Thin trails of grey pollution
Draw arabesques on my mottled skin.
And the cars
the cars
throw splashing, noisy fountains everywhere.

A grey rain turns brown on the floor
a brown rain slicks oily and
multicoloured
around a garbage-bag, draining
then into the black mouth of a drain.
(They call drains wolves' mouths here, and sometimes,
I guess, they could swallow a child -
or two
or perhaps a half dozen, and
 BURP.)

The rain noises about with itself
noises the wind
the concrete, zinc, steel, leaves, grass, soil.
It's a rain of colourful noise as much as grey water.

Bespattering bemused
(colourful) children and bedraggled
(grey) people, and bedraggled
(colourful) people.
And wet, smelly dogs.
With dirty, dirty water.

A rat swims, dead or alive
downhill.
A cat looks and drools from a
window.

A child scolded, a nanny irate
the child gets the rain
the nanny, does not; sober
as a judge she is

and greyer.

Madrigal esfumaçado

Teu seio desenhado congela
como o olhar de uma cobra.
Teus olhos...dos olhos não sei.

Entre os ombros lisos, as costas
são tesas como as de uma gata.
Teus olhos...dos olhos não sei.

Tua voz é rouca ou macia
me confunde de noite e de dia
Teus olhos...dos olhos não sei.

Andando ou parada, sorrindo
ou cansada, és mistério que arde
Teus olhos? Ai, deles não sei!

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

No matter what life you lead
the virgin is a lovely number:
cheeks as fragile as cigarette paper,
arms and legs made of Limoges,
lips like Vin Du Rhône,
rolling her china-blue doll eyes
open and shut.
Open to say, 
Good Day Mama,
and shut for the thrust
of the unicorn.
She is unsoiled.
She is as white as a bonefish.

Once there was a lovely virgin
called Snow White.
Say she was thirteen.
Her stepmother,
a beauty in her own right,
though eaten, of course, by age,
would hear of no beauty surpassing her own.
Beauty is a simple passion,
but, oh my friends, in the end
you will dance the fire dance in iron shoes.
The stepmother had a mirror to which she referred--
something like the weather forecast--
a mirror that proclaimed 
the one beauty of the land.
She would ask,
Looking glass upon the wall,
who is fairest of us all?
And the mirror would reply,
You are the fairest of us all.
Pride pumped in her like poison.

Suddenly one day the mirror replied,
Queen, you are full fair, ‘tis true,
but Snow White is fairer than you.
Until that moment Snow White
had been no more important
than a dust mouse under the bed.
But now the queen saw brown spots on her hand
and four whiskers over her lip
so she condemned Snow White
to be hacked to death.
Bring me her heart, she said to the hunter,
and I will salt it and eat it.
The hunter, however, let his prisoner go
and brought a boar’s heart back to the castle.
The queen chewed it up like a cube steak.
Now I am fairest, she said,
lapping her slim white fingers.

Snow White walked in the wildwood
for weeks and weeks.
At each turn there were twenty doorways
and at each stood a hungry wolf,
his tongue lolling out like a worm.
The birds called out lewdly,
talking like pink parrots,
and the snakes hung down in loops,
each a noose for her sweet white neck.
On the seventh week
she came to the seventh mountain
and there she found the dwarf house.
It was as droll as a honeymoon cottage
and completely equipped with
seven beds, seven chairs, seven forks
and seven chamber pots.
Snow White ate seven chicken livers
and lay down, at last, to sleep.

The dwarfs, those little hot dogs,
walked three times around Snow White,
the sleeping virgin.  They were wise
and wattled like small czars.
Yes.  It’s a good omen,
they said, and will bring us luck.
They stood on tiptoes to watch
Snow White wake up.  She told them
about the mirror and the killer-queen
and they asked her to stay and keep house.
Beware of your stepmother,
they said.
Soon she will know you are here.
While we are away in the mines
during the day, you must not
open the door.

Looking glass upon the wall . . .
The mirror told
and so the queen dressed herself in rags
and went out like a peddler to trap Snow White.
She went across seven mountains.
She came to the dwarf house
and Snow White opened the door
and bought a bit of lacing.
The queen fastened it tightly
around her bodice,
as tight as an Ace bandage,
so tight that Snow White swooned.
She lay on the floor, a plucked daisy.
When the dwarfs came home they undid the lace
and she revived miraculously.
She was as full of life as soda pop.
Beware of your stepmother,
they said.
She will try once more.

Looking glass upon the wall. . .
Once more the mirror told
and once more the queen dressed in rags
and once more Snow White opened the door.
This time she bought a poison comb, 
a curved eight-inch scorpion,
and put it in her hair and swooned again.
The dwarfs returned and took out the comb
and she revived miraculously.
She opened her eyes as wide as Orphan Annie.
Beware, beware, they said,
but the mirror told,
the queen came,
Snow White, the dumb bunny,
opened the door
and she bit into a poison apple
and fell down for the final time.
When the dwarfs returned
they undid her bodice,
they looked for a comb,
but it did no good.
Though they washed her with wine
and rubbed her with butter
it was to no avail.
She lay as still as a gold piece.

The seven dwarfs could not bring themselves
to bury her in the black ground
so they made a glass coffin
and set it upon the seventh mountain
so that all who passed by
could peek in upon her beauty.
A prince came one June day
and would not budge.
He stayed so long his hair turned green
and still he would not leave.
The dwarfs took pity upon him
and gave him the glass Snow White--
its doll’s eyes shut forever--
to keep in his far-off castle.
As the prince’s men carried the coffin
they stumbled and dropped it
and the chunk of apple flew out
of her throat and she woke up miraculously.

And thus Snow White became the prince’s bride.
The wicked queen was invited to the wedding feast
and when she arrived there were
red-hot iron shoes,
in the manner of red-hot roller skates,
clamped upon her feet.
First your toes will smoke
and then your heels will turn black
and you will fry upward like a frog,
she was told.
And so she danced until she was dead,
a subterranean figure,
her tongue flicking in and out
like a gas jet.
Meanwhile Snow White held court,
rolling her china-blue doll eyes open and shut
and sometimes referring to her mirror
as women do.

-Anne Sexton