telling lies

I looked for a translation into portuguese and found it in Ezra Pound’s ABC of reading:

 

amanhã, amanhã e amanhã

caminha em passo parco de dia a dia

até a última sílaba do tempo

e todo nosso passado nada mais fez que

iluminar aos tolos o seu fim no pó.

 

tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow… my daily life measured by a sequence of tomorrows. The idea of linear time is there, yet happening simultaneously: tomorrow being present in the present as well as being lighted by the past – ‘lighted’ in the sense of the past making clear what tomorrow will be.(?) Also the past being part of the present and of the future which in my experience refers to a predictable quality of me knowing beforehand what is going to happen… next. The syllable is only a part, but builds the narrative… builds our stories… the last syllable being an end to the telling of stories (recorded time).

This reminded me of a poem written by Alberto Caieiro (one of the four heteronyms used by the portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa).

 A scholar named Richar Zenith rendered it into english as: Alberto Caeiro as Zen Heteronym

 

“Hello, keeper of sheep

                        There on the side of the road.

                        What does the wind that blows say to you?”

                        “That it is wind and that it blows,

                        And that it has blown before,

                        And that it will blow hereafter.

                        And what does it say to you?”

 

                        “Much more than that.

                        It speaks to me of my many other things.

                        Of memories and nostalgias,

                        And of things that never were.”

                       

                        “You’ve never heard the wind blow.

                        The wind only speaks of the wind.

                        What you heard was a lie,

                        And the lie is in you.”

 

    

Marcia