Why Poetry Can Be Hard for Most People

-  Dorothea Lasky


Because speaking to the dead is not something you want to do
When you have other things to do in your day
Like take out the trash or use the vacuum
In the edge between the stove and cupboard
Because the rat is everywhere
Crawling around
Or more so walking
And it doesn’t even notice you
It has its own intentions
And is searching for that perfect bag of potato chips like you once were
Because life is no more important than eating
Or fucking
Or talking someone into fucking
Or talking someone into something
Or sleeping calmly and soundly
And all you can hope for are the people who put that calm in you
Or let you go into it with dignity
Because poetry reminds you
That there is no dignity
In living
You just muddle through and for what
Jack Jack you wrote to him
You wrote to all of us
I wasn’t even born
You wrote to me
A ball of red and green shifting sparks
In my parents’ eye
You wrote to me and I just listened
I listened I listened I tell you
And I came back
No
Poetry is hard for most people
Because of sound

A criação

-  Anna Akhmatova


Acontece deste modo: uma certa languidez;
No ouvido não se calam as pancadas dos relógios;
Ao longe diminui o estrondo do trovão.
E vislumbram-se queixas e gemidos
De aprisionadas vozes que não se reconhecem.
Um certo círculo secreto estreita-se,
Mas nesse abismo de badaladas e murmúrios
Levanta-se um som que tudo venceu.
É tal o silêncio irreparável em seu redor
Que se escuta como no bosque cresce a erva,
Como anda pela terra o mal com um alforge…
Mas as palavras começaram já a ouvir-se
E das rimas leves os tinidos de sinalização,  –
É quando eu começo a compreender,
E de modo simples as linhas ditadas
Deitam-se no caderno branco de neve.

(Tradução de Joaquim Manuel Magalhães e
Vadim Dmitriev)