E no fim são todos cinza

Uma vez quiseram-me louca, a arder
e eu ardi com a discrição de um fogo posto
porque a cura vai na mesma direcção
que a nossa febre

Ateei-me como um relâmpago inesperado
à luz do dia
Eu parecia uma basílica em chamas
de altar por estrear, a arder sozinha

Sempre me recusei a arder como os outros

Ardam-se mais à esquerda ou mais à direita
mais a vento de sul ou de norte,
mas labaredem-se, sejam fogos que ardem!

Porque pior que a desdita loucura
é toda a gente andar em brasa
mas ninguém chegar a incêndio

E no fim são todos cinza

Cláudia R. Sampaio, "Ver no Escuro" 

  

Who Will Take My Dreams Away

 

Now is the winter of our discontent

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York;

And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;

Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;

Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,

Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.

Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;

And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds

To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,

He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber

To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,

Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;

I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty

To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;

I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,

Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,

Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time

Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,

And that so lamely and unfashionable

That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;

Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,

Have no delight to pass away the time,

Unless to spy my shadow in the sun

And descant on mine own deformity:

And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,

To entertain these fair well-spoken days,

I am determined to prove a villain

And hate the idle pleasures of these days.

Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,

By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,

To set my brother Clarence and the king

In deadly hate the one against the other:

And if King Edward be as true and just

As I am subtle, false and treacherous,

This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up,

About a prophecy, which says that 'G'

Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.

Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here

Clarence comes.

Kurt Vonnegut on the future of the United States (1987)