Today I leave you with some poems I found on an European magazine... They're about nature, landscapes, life in the countryside. Enjoy...
Rainer Maria RILKE (1875-1926) Heart-Slopes
Out on the heart-slopes. See, how tiny down there,
See, the last village of words, and higher,
But how little still, one last
Farmhouse of feeling. Do you know it?
Out on the heart-slopes. Stone ground
Under the hands. Something still
Grows here: on a dumb ledge,
An unknowing plant blooms, sings out.
And the knower? Ah, who began to know
And is silent now, out on the heart-slopes.
There fully conscious many a mountain
Creature, sure-footed, lingers,
Passes. And a huge bird securely
Circles the pure peak of denial. – But
Insecure, here on the slopes of the heart.
Vazha PSHAVELA (1861-1915)
Desperate
Violet born in a dark canyon,
Grew in the shadow of a huge plane
She wished to live for a long time,
She could not hide her wishes,
Not really anymore,
But the lack of the sun rays
Were so painful for her,
She could no longer suffer
From living in total darkness,
Where through the shadow
Of the huge plane,
The sun was blinking to her.
Salomėja NORIS (1904-1945)
You will waken
You will waken in the deep of night...
Woodland winds will summon you to roam
And the birch will wave at its full height,
Greeting swans and cranes returning home.
Meanwhile spring will strew the sky with stars,
Off will all the gates and fences blow.
Through the gaps in cracking snow-drift bars
Soon a blade of grass will peep and grow.
Spring advances, eager for a fight,
Flooding streams, announcing winter’s fall.
You will waken in the deep of night…
Listen to your homeland’s springtime call!
Albinas ŽUKAUSKAS (1912-1987)
Gifts of Autumn
The wind, in the stubble rustling, announces Autumn.
The fields have turned grey, and in hollows the oxen are lowing.
The gossamer’s flying. The summer wheat’s reaped and brought in.
The winter wheat, also, the farmers have
finished sowing.
Bloom, dahlias! Ground frosts will come down and scorch you.
Turn yellow, bend down by the road, Lithuanian birchtree!
The sun’s getting lazy. Blue pinewoods are nodding, sleepy.
Make haste, o you cranes, before twilight, don’t wait till the night!
You’ll get lost if you stray. It is late, but the Milky Way’s keeping
The chain of its beacons across the dark
sky-vault alight.
Fall silent, green grasshopper! Autumn is here with its treasure.
Come, Father, pour beer in our mugs, let us drink it at leisure.
There’s plenty of everything! Apples roll down from the hill.
And bread! For the greediest there’d be enough and to spare.
The rowan-tree burns. In the mud big fat porkers lie still.
Grey geese raise their clamour. The blackbirds on branches bare
Sit noisy and gay as young boys in a mischievous band.
Big carts in a caravan lined, at the cellar-door stand.
We sit down together to drink to the bountiful year,
Inviting our friends and our neighbours to feast with us too.
There are piles of brown meatpies and juicy green cucumbers here,
And honey smells sweet, and good beer foams and flows: here’s to you!
We drink, then we eat, drink anew, and then songs start to sound
Of the bounty that gladdens our hearts, that our labours has crowned.
To you, poet, Autumn brings new inspiration as well.
Go, praise with your rhymes the green rye-shoots that sprout in the fields.
And the stubbly loam left for winter; harsh frosts our old peasants foretell.
Sing of hard working peasants rejoicing, of Autumn’s rich yields,
Of the blessings and gifts of our fertile and bountiful land,
And your song will not rust while her birches and appletrees stand.
José Maria EÇA DE QUEIROZ (1845-1900)
A cidade e as serras
(english translation below)
Em breve os nossos males esqueceram ante a incomparável
beleza daquela serra bendita! Com que brilho
e inspiração copiosa a compusera o Divino Artista que
faz as serras, e que tanto as cuidou, e tão ricamente
as dotou, neste seu Portugal bem-amado! A grandeza
igualava a graça. … Todo um cabeço por vezes era
uma seara, onde um vasto carvalho ancestral, solitário,
dominava como seu senhor e seu guarda. Em
socalcos verdejavam laranjais rescendentes. Caminhos
de lajes soltas circundavam fartos prados com
carneiros e vacas retouçando –ou mais estreitos, entalados
em muros, penetravam sob ramadas
de parra espessa, numa penumbra de repouso e frescura.Trepávamos
então alguma ruazinha de aldeia, dez ou doze
casebres, sumidos entre figueiras, onde se esgaçava,
fugindo do lar pela telha vã, o fumo branco e cheiroso
das pinhas. Nos cerros remotos, por cima da negrura
pensativa dos pinheirais, branquejavam ermidas. O ar
fino e puro entrava na alma, e na alma espalhava
alegria e força. Um esparso tilintar de chocalhos de
guizos morria pelas quebradas…
Jacinto adiante, na sua égua ruça, murmurava: “Que beleza!”
E eu atrás, no burro de Sancho, murmurava: “Que beleza!”
The city and the mountains
The incomparable beauty of that blessed mountain
speedily banished our ills. With what verve and profusion
of inspiration it had been contrived by the divine
artist who makes the mountains and has lavished such
care and plenty on them in His beloved Portugal!
The
grandeur of the scene was equalled only by its beauty.
… Sometimes an entire hillside would be one newly
harvested field, its lord and
guard a solitary immemorial
oak. On terraces gleamed the dark-green foliage
of orange trees that scented the air. Roadways made
of uneven slabs circled lush meadows in which cattle
and sheep playfully grazed, and narrower ones flanked
by walls would here and there enter the cooling, restful
shade of trellised greenery. We were advancing up
the street of a village, ten or a dozen mean houses
almost hidden by fig-trees and with hollow-tiled chimneys
that emitted wispy, fragrant smoke from pinecone
fires. On the distant hills, above the meditative
blackness of the pine groves, were little sparkling-white
chapels. The pure, thin air penetrated the soul and
gave it joy and strength. The scattered tinkling of animal
bells faded in the depths of ravines …
Jacinto, leading on his bay mare, softly exclaimed:“How lovely!”
And I, following on Sancho’s donkey, softly exclaimed:“How lovely!”
Desanka MAKSIMOVIC (1898-1993)
Spring poem
While watching all these early buds and swallows,
I can feel tonight
that my heart’s slowly growing over sorrows
as someone’s horizon on smiley days might;
that it’s getting bigger like all plants around
and light as a feather,
and that all happiness that’s above the ground
and a Hell of pain wouldn’t really matter:
It’s longing for all things that a life as such
could give nice to thy,
and completely nothing wouldn’t be too much –
its eager desire and hopes are so high.
Everything that’s happened has been just a play
of my heart on fire;
my true love has never been given away
as much as I could and as I desire;
There are, in my deeps, gentle tides of words
never let outside;
I could give my heart to everyone on worlds,
yet, it would remain a lot of it inside.
Ivan MINATTI, born / né en 1924
You must love someone
You must love someone,
even though only grass, river, tree or stone,
on someone
’s shoulder you must lay your hand,
so that it gluts its hunger with the nearness,
there must, there must be someone,
it is like bread, like a drink of water,
to whom you must give your white clouds,
your brave birds of dreams,
your shy birds of helplessness
– somewhere for them there must be
a nest of peace and tenderness –
you must love someone,
though only grass, river, tree or stone,
for trees and grass
know what loneliness is
– for footsteps always pass by
even if they pause for a moment –
for the river knows what sadness is
– it needs only brood over its depths –
for the stone knows what pain is
– how many heavy feet
have already gone over its mute heart –
You must love someone,
You must love someone,
walk side by side with someone
on the same path –
O, grass, river, stone, trees,
silent companions of the strange and lonely,
good, great beings,
who begin to speak
only when man has fallen silent.
Julio LLAMAZARES, born / né en 1955
(english translation below)
El paisaje es memoria. Más allá de sus límites, el paisaje
sostiene las huellas del pasado, reconstruye recuerdos,
proyecta en la mirada la sombra de otro tiempo que,
sólo existe ya como reflejo de sí mismo, en la memoria
del viajero, del que, simplemente, sigue fiel a ese paisaje.
Para el hombre romántico, el paisaje es, además, la
fuente originaria y principal de la melancolía. Símbolo
de la muerte, de la fugacidad brutal del tiempo y de la
vida – el paisaje es eterno y sobrevive en todo caso al
que lo mira – representa también ese escenario último
en el que la desposesión y el vértigo y el miedo al infinito
destruyen poco a poco la memoria del viajero – el
hombre, en suma –, que sabe desde siempre que el
camino que recorre no lleva a ningún sitio. Para el
hombre romántico no es la mirada la que enferma ante
el paisaje. Es el paisaje el que termina convirtiéndose
en una enfermedad del corazón y del espíritu.
Es el paisaje esa concisión – y en la intuición lejana de
que el paisaje y la memoria, en ocasiones, son lo mismo
–, me eché un día al camino en el verano de 1981, a
recorrer a pie, desde su muerte hasta su origen, el río
en torno al cual pasé todos los veranos de mi infancia
y en cuyas aguas vi por vez primera reflejadas las
sombras de los nogales y del olvido. Después de muchos
años sin apenas regresar junto a su orilla, y de recordarle
sólo por las imágenes de los ojos y por las fotografías,
encontre de nuevo el Curueño, el legendario
río de mi infancia, el solitario y verde río […] que atraviesa
en vertical el corazón de la montaña leonesa. […]
Landscape is memory. Landscape is bigger than its
visible boundaries, retaining traces of the past, recreating
it, casting shadows evocative of times that are
mere echoes in the memory of the traveller, or of
whoever has an enduring loyalty to the landscape.
To the romantic, landscape, additionally, is the source
of original melancholy. Reminding us of mortality, the
cruel shortness of our time span (the landscape is
eternal, or at least outlasts its beholder), it also sets the
scene for our end – the gradual dispossession, the
dizzying decline, the fear of the infinite, the oblivion
that overtakes the traveller (in short, man), who has
forever been told that he is on a road to nowhere. In
the romantic man it is less the gaze on the landscape
that weakens than the landscape itself that eventually
turns into sickness of the heart and mind.
That conviction (combined with a vague intuition that
landscape and memory are sometimes one and the
same) one day gave me an urge – this was the summer
of 1981 – to walk, from its outflow to its source, the river
in whose vicinity I had spent every summer as a child
and in which I had first seen reflected the shadows cast
by the walnut trees and by – something darker. In all
the years since, I had scarcely been back, retaining
only visual memories and photographs. And here it
was, the Curueño – the mythic river of my childhood,
…flowing down from the north, green and solitary,
amidst the mountains of León …
Photos by Luis Violante, Marta Santos, Julie Tilden, Alice Gama and Joe Medley
Feeding our garrano horses at the Faia Brava Local Reserve... I love my job!
This picture was taken by my brother at an event we organized at ATN (Festa da Pecuária - Cattle Fest). It was organized to remind people of traditions that are being lost in a region that is being devastated by wildfires and land abandonement. This is Castelo Rodrigo, a castle near my house.
