Poem
The cafe in my neighbourhood now has scones+tea at 16.30. The cool thing is the little poem that comes with it. Went there yesterday and this is what accompanied mine:
Cidade
Cidade, rumor e vaivém sem paz das ruas,
Ó vida suja, hostil, inutilmente gasta.
Saber que existe o mar e as praias nuas,
montanhas sem nome e planícies mais vastas
Que o mais vasto desejo,
E eu estou em ti fechada e apenas vejo
Os muros e as paredes, e não vejo
nem o crescer do mar, nem o mudar das luas.
Saber que tomas em ti a minha vida
E que arrastas pela sombra das paredes
A minha alma que fora prometida
Às ondas brancas e às florestas verdes.
by: Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen
Don't have time to translate it for now, but it's about the city, how we're trapped there when there are beaches and the sea and «nameless mountains». There's the big plains outside, but here we only see walls. It's really beautifull, and there's this feeling of suffocation and entrapment and a nostalgia for the nature and simpler things, away from all the endless movement of the cities. The funny thing is, I had spent the whole week working at home, enclosed by walls, feeling trapped and sort of miserable. The poem seemed to express my exact feelings. Sort of like a furtune cookie but without telling my fortune, just my inner feelings. Or maybe it was telling my fortune. Telling me to get away from it and get a taste of the waves and the trees. God knows how I need that sometimes.
Cidade
Cidade, rumor e vaivém sem paz das ruas,
Ó vida suja, hostil, inutilmente gasta.
Saber que existe o mar e as praias nuas,
montanhas sem nome e planícies mais vastas
Que o mais vasto desejo,
E eu estou em ti fechada e apenas vejo
Os muros e as paredes, e não vejo
nem o crescer do mar, nem o mudar das luas.
Saber que tomas em ti a minha vida
E que arrastas pela sombra das paredes
A minha alma que fora prometida
Às ondas brancas e às florestas verdes.
by: Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen
Don't have time to translate it for now, but it's about the city, how we're trapped there when there are beaches and the sea and «nameless mountains». There's the big plains outside, but here we only see walls. It's really beautifull, and there's this feeling of suffocation and entrapment and a nostalgia for the nature and simpler things, away from all the endless movement of the cities. The funny thing is, I had spent the whole week working at home, enclosed by walls, feeling trapped and sort of miserable. The poem seemed to express my exact feelings. Sort of like a furtune cookie but without telling my fortune, just my inner feelings. Or maybe it was telling my fortune. Telling me to get away from it and get a taste of the waves and the trees. God knows how I need that sometimes.