um cheirinho

Pier Paolo Pasolini "Uccellacci e uccellini" (Passarinhos e Passarões), 1966

Joost Swarte

  Joost Swarte, Dessin de couverture pour Abitare Salone del Mobile, Milan, 2003

  Joost Swarte, Dilemne, 1987

Charles Bukowski

A Love Poem

all the women
all their kisses the
different ways they love and
talk and need.

their ears they all have
ears and
throats and dresses
and shoes and
automobiles and ex-
husbands.

mostly
the women are very
warm they remind me of
buttered toast with the butter
melted
in.

there is a look in the
eye: they have been
taken they have been
fooled. I don’t quite know what to
do for
them.

I am
a fair cook a good
listener
but I never learned to
dance — I was busy
then with larger things.

but I’ve enjoyed their different
beds
smoking cigarettes
staring at the
ceilings. I was neither vicious nor
unfair. only
a student.

I know they all have these
feet and barefoot they go across the floor as
I watch their bashful buttocks in the
dark. I know that they like me, some even
love me
but I love very
few.

some give me orange and vitamin pills;
others talk very quietly of
childhood and fathers and
landscapes; some are almost
crazy but none of them are without
meaning; some love
well, others not
so; the best at sex are not always the
best in other
ways; each has limits as I have
limits and we learn
each other
quickly.

all the women all the
women all the
bedrooms
the rugs the
photos the
curtains, it’s
something like a church only
at times there’s
laughter.

those ears those
arms those
elbows those eyes
looking, the fondness and
the wanting I have been
held have been
held.

Philip Larkin

  

Annus Mirabilis

Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

Up to then there'd only been
A sort of bargaining,
A wrangle for the ring,
A shame that started at sixteen
And spread to everything.

Then all at once the quarrel sank:
Everyone felt the same,
And every life became
A brilliant breaking of the bank,
A quite unlosable game.

So life was never better than
In nineteen sixty-three
(Though just too late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

  
O TABACO DA VIDA

De amor cantando,
sem nele demasiado acreditar,
dei a volta ao coração (demorei anos):
está só - mas sem nenhuma vontade de parar...

Desiludidos? Paciência, amigos...
Bebamos mais, fumemos, refumemos,
entre as mulheres, o tabaco e a vida.
Como cedilhas pendurados que felizes seremos,

exemplares cretinos nesta noite comprida...

Alexandre O'Neill, "Poesias Completas" assírio & alvim, 2000