Ode to a Nightingale - KEATS

Thursday, January 23, 2014 | 0 Comments

Read by Benedict Cumberbatch. Cumberbatch’s reading sounds and feels absolutely close and intimate. We could point out his extraordinarily beautiful voice, but it's the way he performs the poem, full of emotion and sincerity that makes it so breathtaking and poignant.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
         My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
         One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
         But being too happy in thine happiness,—
                That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
                        In some melodious plot
         Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
                Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
         Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
         Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
         Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
                With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
                        And purple-stained mouth;
         That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
                And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
         What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
         Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
         Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
                Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
                        And leaden-eyed despairs,
         Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
                Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
         Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
         Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
         And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
                Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
                        But here there is no light,
         Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
                Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
         Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
         Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
         White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
                Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
                        And mid-May's eldest child,
         The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
                The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
         I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
         To take into the air my quiet breath;
                Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
         To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
                While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
                        In such an ecstasy!
         Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
                   To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
         No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
         In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
         Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
                She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
                        The same that oft-times hath
         Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
                Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
         To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
         As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
         Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
                Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
                        In the next valley-glades:
         Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
                Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

Celebration Day

Wednesday, January 22, 2014 | 2 Comments


Sydney, January 22, 2014

Time goes by and inexplicably I still love you.
We flew through oceans and we turned our life upside down. We defy all laws of physics and laughed at all love treaties. And here we are twenty-two years later, as if nothing had changed when everything changed.
Here, where we feel so close although so far and where all the familiarity I have is your body, your voice and your restless soul pulling me by the hand.
It is always in you that I rest my soul, my love.
And it is always in you that I become breathless.
My home is you. With a large open terrace over the world. And I know that I am unbearable and so, too volatile tenant.
I wonder what I did to deserve you, what magical trick gave me the privilege of knowing you in your deepest darkness and dazzling me with the emanating light from your deep, so dense and unsearchable eyes.
And what thou shalt have done so extraordinary for me to laugh everyday with your edgy sense of humour, to soften me with your demureness, to exasperate me with your acid rationality and always be fascinated with this gift of yours of looking flawless in a suit.
I do not even know how long will our love last.
I do not promise you anything, I warn you!
Well you know it's best not too rise the expectations, and anyway it pleases me to keep the mystery and make myself more intense.
But I got used to being happy. And we both know that love does not aim happiness. And happiness is so unlikely...
“Maybe you'll still love me tomorrow” is what I accept by loving you today.
Because all we really have is what we feel now. Right now!
In this single moment when I am writing and you're reading this words.
Love exists at 5:45 in this stuffy, gray day. Here in this porch where I sit, in the traffic passing below, in the blissful petrichor scent, in the joyful cries of cockatoos flying around, within this difficult gesture of finding the accurate words to say what the soul already knows. What the soul already is.
Because to be is all we need.

(Please be kind. English isn't my mother language and my eloquence still struggles with the lack of elegance and vocabulary. But I'm working hard to improve it.)


Sydney, 22 de Janeiro e 2014

O tempo passa e de forma inexplicável continuo a amar-te.
Viajámos oceanos, virámos do avesso a vida, desafiámos as leis da física, rimos de todos os tratados de amor e aqui estamos, vinte e dois anos depois, como se nada tivesse mudado quando tudo mudou.
Aqui, onde nos sentimos tão próximos e onde toda a familiaridade que tenho é o teu corpo, a tua voz, a tua alma inquieta a puxar-me pela mão.
É sempre em ti que repouso, meu amor.
E é sempre em ti que o ar me falta.
A minha casa és tu. Com um grande terraço aberto sobre o mundo. E eu sei que por vezes sou uma inquilina insuportável e tão, demasiado volátil.
Pergunto-me o que fiz de absolutamente único para te merecer, que passo de mágica me deu o privilégio de conhecer a tua escuridão e de me deslumbrar com a luz que emana dos teus olhos profundos, tão densos e impenetráveis.
E o que terás tu feito de extraordinário para me rir todos os dias com o teu senso de humor acutilante, de me enternecer com a tua timidez, de me exasperar com a tua ácida racionalidade e de ficar sempre fascinada com esse dom de ficar sempre impecável num fato.
Não sei bem por quantos anos mais te irei amar. 
Não te prometo nada, aviso-te já! 
Bem sabes que é melhor não subir demasiado as expectativas, além de que me agrada manter o mistério e fazer-me de intensa.
Mas habituei-me demasiado a ser feliz. E bem sabemos que o amor não tem por fim a felicidade. E a felicidade é tão improvável... 
"Pode ser que amanhã ainda me ames", é o que penso e aceito de cada vez que vivo o amor que te tenho hoje. 
Porque tudo o que realmente temos é o que sentimos agora. Já!
Neste preciso instante que te escrevo e em que tu me lês. 
O amor existe às 17:45 deste dia abafado e cinzento, nesta mesa da varanda onde me sento, no trânsito que passa lá em baixo, no perfume a terra molhada, no grito alegre das catatuas que voam por perto, neste gesto difícil de passar para palavras o que a alma já sabe. O que a alma já é. 
E porque ser é tudo o que precisamos. 

About

Mei and Arawn