sábado, 31 de agosto de 2024
Meditações - Count the slow clock, and dine exact at noon
Epistle to Miss Blount, On Her Leaving the Town, After the Coronation
As some fond virgin, whom her mother’s care
Drags from the town to wholesome country air,
Just when she learns to roll a melting eye,
And hear a spark, yet think no danger nigh;
From the dear man unwillingly she must sever,
Yet takes one kiss before she parts for ever:
Thus from the world fair Zephalinda flew,
Saw others happy, and with sighs withdrew;
Not that their pleasures caused her discontent,
She sighed not that They stayed, but that She went.
She went, to plain-work, and to purling brooks,
Old-fashioned halls, dull aunts, and croaking rooks,
She went from Opera, park, assembly, play,
To morning walks, and prayers three hours a day;
To pass her time ‘twixt reading and Bohea,
To muse, and spill her solitary tea,
Or o’er cold coffee trifle with the spoon,
Count the slow clock, and dine exact at noon;
Divert her eyes with pictures in the fire,
Hum half a tune, tell stories to the squire;
Up to her godly garret after seven,
There starve and pray, for that’s the way to heaven.
Some Squire, perhaps, you take a delight to rack;
Whose game is Whisk, whose treat a toast in sack,
Who visits with a gun, presents you birds,
Then gives a smacking buss, and cries – No words!
Or with his hound comes hollowing from the stable,
Makes love with nods, and knees beneath a table;
Whose laughs are hearty, tho’ his jests are coarse,
And loves you best of all things – but his horse.
In some fair evening, on your elbow laid,
Your dream of triumphs in the rural shade;
In pensive thought recall the fancied scene,
See Coronations rise on every green;
Before you pass th’ imaginary sights
Of Lords, and Earls, and Dukes, and gartered Knights;
While the spread fan o’ershades your closing eyes;
Then give one flirt, and all the vision flies.
Thus vanish scepters, coronets, and balls,
And leave you in lone woods, or empty walls.
So when your slave, at some dear, idle time,
(Not plagued with headaches, or the want of rhyme)
Stands in the streets, abstracted from the crew,
And while he seems to study, thinks of you:
Just when his fancy points your sprightly eyes,
Or sees the blush of soft Parthenia rise,
Gay pats my shoulder, and you vanish quite;
Streets, chairs, and coxcombs rush upon my sight;
Vexed to be still in town, I knit my brow,
Look sour, and hum a tune – as you may now.
Alexander Pope
sexta-feira, 30 de agosto de 2024
Há 40 anos - Algarve Jóia e Ourivesaria Dinis, Quarteira, 1984
(arquivo Fernando Correia de Oliveira)
Meditações - it never can be that age, time, or death, can divide thee and me!
Auld Robin Forbes
And auld Robin Forbes hes gien tem a dance,
I pat on my speckets to see them aw prance;
I thout o’ the days when I was but fifteen,
And skipp’d wi’ the best upon Forbes’s green.
Of aw things that is I think thout is meast queer,
It brings that that’s by-past and sets it down here;
I see Willy as plain as I dui this bit leace,
When he tuik his cwoat lappet and deeghted his feace.
The lasses aw wonder’d what Willy cud see
In yen that was dark and hard featur’d leyke me;
And they wonder’d ay mair when they talk’d o’ my wit,
And slily telt Willy that cudn’t be it:
But Willy he laugh’d, and he meade me his weyfe,
And whea was mair happy thro’ aw his lang leyfe?
It’s e’en my great comfort, now Willy is geane,
The he offen said— nae place was leyke his awn heame!
I mind when I carried my wark to yon steyle
Where Willy was deykin, the time to beguile,
He wad fling me a daisy to put i’ my breast,
And I hammer’d my noddle to mek out a jest.
But merry or grave, Willy often wad tell
There was nin o’ the leave that was leyke my awn sel;
And he spak what he thout, for I’d hardly a plack
When we married, and nobbet ae gown to my back.
When the clock had struck eight I expected him heame,
And wheyles went to meet him as far as Dumleane;
Of aw hours it telt eight was dearest to me,
But now when it streykes there’s a tear i’ my ee.
O Willy! dear Willy! it never can be
That age, time, or death, can divide thee and me!
For that spot on earth that’s aye dearest to me,
Is the turf that has cover’d my Willy frae me!
Susanna Blamire
quinta-feira, 29 de agosto de 2024
Memorabilia - cartazes da Baselworld para 2017 e 2019
O canto do cisne da Baselworld. Cartazes da 100ª edição, 2017; e da derradeira, em 2019 (arquivo Fernando Correia de Oliveira)
Meditações - since for you I stopped the clock, It never goes again
A Shropshire Lad 53: The lad came to the door at night
The lad came to the door at night,
When lovers crown
their vows,
And whistled soft and out of sight
In shadow of the
boughs.
‘I shall not vex you with my face
Henceforth, my
love, for aye;
So take me in your arms a space
Before the east is
grey.
‘When I from hence away am past
I shall not find a
bride,
And you shall be the first and last
I ever lay
beside.’
She heard and went and knew not why;
Her heart to his
she laid;
Light was the air beneath the sky
But dark under the
shade.
‘Oh do you breathe, lad, that your breast
Seems not to rise
and fall,
And here upon my bosom prest
There beats no
heart at all?’
‘Oh loud, my girl, it once would knock,
You should have
felt it then;
But since for you I stopped the clock
It never goes
again.’
‘Oh lad, what is it, lad, that drips
Wet from your neck
on mine?
What is it falling on my lips,
My lad, that
tastes of brine?’
‘Oh like enough ’tis blood, my dear,
For when the knife
has slit
The throat across from ear to ear
’Twill bleed
because of it.’
A. E. Housman
quarta-feira, 28 de agosto de 2024
Meditações - a time clock punched every morning
The Windy City [sections 1 and 6]
The lean hands of wagon men
put out pointing fingers here,
picked this crossway, put it on a map,
set up their sawbucks, fixed their shotguns,
found a hitching place for the pony express,
made a hitching place for the iron horse,
the one-eyed horse with the fire-spit head,
found a homelike spot and said, “Make a home,”
saw this corner with a mesh of rails, shuttling
people,
shunting cars, shaping the junk of
the earth to a
new city.
The hands of men took hold and tugged
And the breaths of men went into the junk
And the junk stood up into skyscrapers and asked:
Who am I? Am I a city? And if I am what is my name?
And once while the time whistles blew and blew again
The men answered: Long ago we gave you a name,
Long ago we laughed and said: You? Your name is Chicago.
Early the red men gave a name to the river,
the place of
the skunk,
the river of
the wild onion smell,
Shee-caw-go.
Out of the payday songs of steam shovels,
Out of the wages of structural iron rivets,
The living lighted skyscrapers tell it now as a name,
Tell it across miles of sea blue water, gray blue land:
I am Chicago, I am a name given out by the breaths of
working men,
laughing men, a
child, a belonging.
So between the Great Lakes,
The Grand De Tour, and the Grand Prairie,
The living lighted skyscrapers stand,
Spotting the blue dusk with checkers of yellow,
streamers of
smoke and silver,
parallelograms
of night-gray watchmen,
Singing a soft moaning song: I am a child, a belonging.
6
The wheelbarrows grin, the shovels and the mortar
hoist an
exploit.
The stone shanks of the Monadnock, the Transportation,
the People’s
Gas Building, stand up and scrape
at the sky.
The wheelbarrows sing, the bevels and the blueprints
whisper.
The library building named after Crerar, naked
as a stock farm
silo, light as a single eagle
feather,
stripped like an airplane propeller,
takes a path
up.
Two cool new rivets says, “Maybe it is morning.”
“God knows.”
Put the city up; tear the city down;
put it up
again; let us find a city.
Let us remember the little violet-eyed
man who gave
all, praying, “Dig and
dream, dream
and hammer, till your
city comes.”
Every day the people sleep and the city dies;
every day the
people shake loose, awake and
build the city
again.
The city is a tool chest opened every day,
a time clock
punched every morning,
a shop door,
bunkers and overalls
counting every
day.
The city is a balloon and a bubble plaything
shot to the sky
every evening, whistled in
a ragtime jig
down the sunset.
The city is made, forgotten, and made again,
trucks hauling
it away haul it back
steered by
drivers whistling ragtime
against the
sunsets.
Every day the people get up and carry the city,
carry the
bunkers and balloons of the city,
lift it and put
it down.
“I will
die as many times
as you
make me over again,
says
the city to the people,
I am the woman, the home, the family,
I get breakfast and pay the rent;
I telephone the doctor, the milkman, the undertaker;
I fix the
streets
for your first
and your last ride—
Come clean with me, come clean or dirty,
I am stone and steel of your sleeping numbers;
I remember all
you forget.
I will die as
many times
as you make me
over again.”
Under the foundations,
Over the roofs,
The bevels and the blueprints talk it over.
The wind of the lake shore waits and wanders.
The heave of the shore wind hunches the sand piles.
The winkers of the morning stars count out cities
And forget the numbers.
Carl Sandburg
terça-feira, 27 de agosto de 2024
Meditações - the splintered hand of a clock
Cane
When the mule balked, he hit him
sometimes with the flat of a hand
upside the head; more often
the stick he carried did its angry trick.
The mule’s job was to power the press,
iron on iron that wrung the sugar
out of cane, circling under the coarse
beam attached to his shoulders and neck.
That mule of my childhood
was black, remained blackly obedient
as round and round he made himself
the splintered hand of a clock, the groan
and squeak of machinery chewing
the reedy stalks to pulp, each second
delivering another sweet thin drop
into the black pot at the center.
He hit him with a rag, old headrag,
but the animal winced only with the thrash
of a cane stalk itself—he squinted
under the rule of that bamboo.
The sun was another caning
on his black-hot flesh. He was slow
as the blackstrap syrup the boiled sugar made,
so true to the circle he dragged
we hardly saw him. We loved the rustling
house of green cane, blind in that field
of tropical grasses whose white plumes
announced the long season’s wait.
We yearned for the six-foot stem, the eventual
six pieces the machete sliced
at the joints, then the woody exterior
peeled back lengthwise with a blade.
It was a black hand we waited for, his job
to lay bare the grainy fiber we chewed.
That juice on our tongues
was his sweetness at work.
Chester was his name, he kept the mule.
Cleopatra Mathis, “Cane” from White Sea, 2005
segunda-feira, 26 de agosto de 2024
Meditações - The snake-clock’s pointer licks the silence
The Indoors is Endless
It’s spring in 1827, Beethoven
hoists his death-mask and sails off.
The grindstones are turning in Europe’s windmills.
The wild geese are flying northwards.
Here is the north, here is Stockholm
swimming palaces and hovels.
The logs in the royal fireplace
collapse from Attention to At Ease.
Peace prevails, vaccine and potatoes,
but the city wells breathe heavily.
Privy barrels in sedan chairs like paschas
are carried by night over the North Bridge.
The cobblestones make them stagger
mamselles loafers gentlemen.
Implacably still, the sign-board
with the smoking blackamoor.
So many islands, so much rowing
with invisible oars against the current!
The channels open up, April May
and sweet honey dribbling June.
The heat reaches islands far out.
The village doors are open, except one.
The snake-clock’s pointer licks the silence.
The rock slopes glow with geology’s patience.
It happened like this, or almost.
It is an obscure family tale
about Erik, done down by a curse
disabled by a bullet through the soul.
He went to town, met an enemy
and sailed home sick and grey.
Keeps to his bed all that summer.
The tools on the wall are in mourning.
He lies awake, hears the woolly flutter
of night moths, his moonlight comrades.
His strength ebbs out, he pushes in vain
against the iron-bound tomorrow.
And the God of the depths cries out of the depths
‘Deliver me! Deliver yourself!’
All the surface action turns inwards.
He’s taken apart, put together.
The wind rises and the wild rose bushes
catch on the fleeing light.
The future opens, he looks into
the self-rotating kaleidoscope
sees indistinct fluttering faces
family faces not yet born.
By mistake his gaze strikes me
as I walk around here in Washington
among grandiose houses where only
every second column bears weight.
White buildings in crematorium style
where the dream of the poor turns to ash.
The gentle downward slope gets steeper
and imperceptibly becomes an abyss.
Tomas Transtromer, “The Indoors is Endless” from New and Collected Poems
domingo, 25 de agosto de 2024
Meditações - Chronometers tick and cannon boom
Brief reflection on accuracy
Fish
always accurately
know where to move and when,
and likewise
birds have an
accurate built-in time sense
and orientation.
Humanity, however,
lacking such
instincts resorts to scientific
research. Its
nature is illustrated by the following
occurrence.
A certain soldier
had to fire a
cannon at six o’clock sharp every evening.
Being a soldier he
did so. When his accuracy was
investigated he
explained:
I go by
the absolutely
accurate chronometer in the window
of the clockmaker
down in the city. Every day at seventeen
forty-five I set
my watch by it and
climb the hill
where my cannon stands ready.
At seventeen
fifty-nine precisely I step up to the cannon
and at eighteen
hours sharp I fire.
And it was clear
that this method
of firing was absolutely accurate.
All that was left
was to check that chronometer. So
the clockmaker
down in the city was questioned about
his instrument’s
accuracy.
Oh, said the clockmaker,
this is one of the
most accurate instruments ever. Just imagine,
for many years now
a cannon has been fired at six o’clock sharp.
And every day I
look at this chronometer
and always it
shows exactly six.
Chronometers tick and cannon boom.
Miroslav Holub, "Brief reflection on accuracy” from Poems Before & After
sábado, 24 de agosto de 2024
Memorabilia - Porto Graham's de 1988, relógio Tissot Porto, 2001
Garrafa de porto Graham's de 1988, oferecida aquando do lançamento do relógios Tissot Porto, em Julho de 2001
10 relógios de pulso...
in Venham dizer.me como vivem, de Agatha Chtistie (contribuição de Rita Maltez)
Meditações - where people were days becoming months and years
Empire
He wore a little spiraled hat and wrote a song
that everyone sang. He lived on the mountainside
above a lake with a mythical beast he’d subdued.
A train circled the village each hour, over and over,
as he leaned down over the clock of his
world
where people were days becoming months and years.
In a park, from the hides of ten
cows, he’d constructed
a giant
ball that everyone touched until it became
a torn rag. He had no family, and because he worried
so much about them: What if, what if, what if, like another
beast pawing away, he’d invented a vitamin for everyone
old that allowed you to continue slowly to grow
until you forgot everything you once knew.
Mark Irwin
sexta-feira, 23 de agosto de 2024
Há 200 anos - travesti cheio de jóias roubadas
L IS B O A , 22 dc Agosto.
Continuação dos extractos. das Gasetas Inglesas.
« F o i conduzido hum indivíduo desconhecido da Catalunha para a Cadêa de Perpinhão. File vinha trajado de huma grande quantidade de vestidos, e chamava-se natural da Suissa, ainda que parecia ser hum Frances. Elle trazia huma variedade de joias de grande valor. E ntre outras cousas huma caixa forte cheia de cigarros; ella era de ouro , muito bem trabalhada, com dois pequenos retratos feitos por Bouin. H um destes retratos, era o de hum homem decorado de Imma ordem II espanhola; e o outro eia o de huma mulher com os cabellos penteados á moda d ’Uespanha. E ntre as peças curiosas que elle tra zia havia: lambem hum grande rosário de cristal polido artificialmente e enfiado em hum cordão d ’ouro com os mais ornamentos deste metal ; elle se achava prezo a huma lamina quadrada , na qual estava gravada huma AveM aria, e com huma grande e formosa cruz apensa, da mesma descripção. — Julga-se que isto foi furtado em França a alguma família opulenta. Hum alfinete de ou- io , ornado com as letras R . Y. tem no reverso estas palavras „no lo pierdas. Acha-se também n’hum saquinho de co u ro , hum relogio de F eroz, que tem estas palavras „ Luis Guerrero.» (Jornal de Perpinhão.)
Gazeta de Lisboa, n.º 198, de 23/08/1824 (arquivo Fernando Correia de Oliveira)
Continuação dos extractos. das Gasetas Inglesas.
« F o i conduzido hum indivíduo desconhecido da Catalunha para a Cadêa de Perpinhão. File vinha trajado de huma grande quantidade de vestidos, e chamava-se natural da Suissa, ainda que parecia ser hum Frances. Elle trazia huma variedade de joias de grande valor. E ntre outras cousas huma caixa forte cheia de cigarros; ella era de ouro , muito bem trabalhada, com dois pequenos retratos feitos por Bouin. H um destes retratos, era o de hum homem decorado de Imma ordem II espanhola; e o outro eia o de huma mulher com os cabellos penteados á moda d ’Uespanha. E ntre as peças curiosas que elle tra zia havia: lambem hum grande rosário de cristal polido artificialmente e enfiado em hum cordão d ’ouro com os mais ornamentos deste metal ; elle se achava prezo a huma lamina quadrada , na qual estava gravada huma AveM aria, e com huma grande e formosa cruz apensa, da mesma descripção. — Julga-se que isto foi furtado em França a alguma família opulenta. Hum alfinete de ou- io , ornado com as letras R . Y. tem no reverso estas palavras „no lo pierdas. Acha-se também n’hum saquinho de co u ro , hum relogio de F eroz, que tem estas palavras „ Luis Guerrero.» (Jornal de Perpinhão.)
Gazeta de Lisboa, n.º 198, de 23/08/1824 (arquivo Fernando Correia de Oliveira)
Coisas do Ephemera - calendários, Lotaria Nacional - homenagem ao cinema português
Coordenamos desde a sua criação, em Janeiro de 2020, o Núcleo do Tempo do Arquivo Ephemera. Nele, além de muito outro materual relacionado com o tempo cronológico, há centenas de calendários, de parede ou de bolso. Quando eles dizem respeito a matérias de outros núcleos, como a Gastronomia, são encaminhados para lá. No caso desta colecção, passará para o Núcleo de Cinema do maior arquivo privado de Portugal.
