“Delicada a hora
Que nos apavora
Lentamente
A ternura que regressa
A promessa
Do momento,
Inefável abraço
Louco, o desejo,
Leva-me contigo
A ti pertenço, em ti me revejo.”

“A Peste”

“Depois de um silêncio, o médico soergueu-se um pouco e perguntou-lhe se tinha alguma ideia acerca do caminho que era preciso seguir para se chegar à paz.

- Tenho. A simpatia.

Duas campainhas de ambulância ressoaram ao longe. (...) Depois o silêncio voltou. Rieux contou duas rotações do farol. A brisa pareceu ganhar mais força e, ao mesmo tempo, um sopro vindo do mar trouxe um cheiro a sal. Ouvia-se agora distintamente a surda respiração das vagas contra a falésia.

- Em suma - disse Tarrou com simplicidade -, o que me interessa é saber como se pode ser santo.

- Mas você não acredita em Deus.

- Justamente. Pode ser-se santo sem Deus? Eis o único problema que hoje me preocupa.

(...)

(...) respondeu o médico -,mas, sabe, eu sinto mais solidariedade com os vencidos do que com os santos. Creio que não tenho gosto pelo heroísmo e pela santidade. O que me interessa é ser um homem.”

"O Acaso e o Caos"

“Há muito acaso no Universo e também bastante estrutura. E a vida surgiu no Universo. Muito facilmente ao que parece, mas não sabemos exactamente como. As pequenas mensagens genéticas que são a essência da vida enfrentaram a complexidade do Universo e adaptaram-se a ele. Depois as pequenas mensagens genéticas descobriram a arte de se recombinar, que se chama sexualidade. E o benefício desta descoberta foi grande, porque permitiu às mensagens genéticas explorar melhor a ordem e a estrutura do Universo.

As mensagens genéticas da vida são assembleias de genes egoístas. Mas a selecção natural força estes genes a cooperar de um modo que não seja muito ineficiente. E a vida criou uma proliferação de formas e de mecanismos para utilizar o mundo que nos rodeia, para explorar as regularidades da estrutura do Universo.

E precisamente por existirem regularidades na estrutura do Universo, e porque a vida pode explorá-las em seu proveito, surgiu lentamente uma nova característica da vida. É aquilo a que chamamos a inteligência.”

"Serenade"

So sweet the hour, so calm the time,
I feel it more than half a crime,
When Nature sleeps and stars are mute,
To mar the silence ev'n with lute.
At rest on ocean's brilliant dyes
An image of Elysium lies:
Seven Pleiades entranced in Heaven,
Form in the deep another seven:
Endymion nodding from above
Sees in the sea a second love.
Within the valleys dim and brown,
And on the spectral mountain's crown,
The wearied light is dying down,
And earth, and stars, and sea, and sky
Are redolent of sleep, as I
Am redolent of thee and thine
Enthralling love, my Adeline.
But list, O list,- so soft and low
Thy lover's voice tonight shall flow,
That, scarce awake, thy soul shall deem
My words the music of a dream.
Thus, while no single sound too rude
Upon thy slumber shall intrude,
Our thoughts, our souls- O God above!
In every deed shall mingle, love.

“Keep me fully glad with nothing. Only
take my hand in your hand.
In the gloom of the deepening night take
up my heart and play with it as you list.
Bind me close to you with nothing.
I will spread myself out at your feet and lie still. Under this clouded sky I will meet silence with silence. I will become
one with the night clasping the earth in my breast.
Make my life glad with nothing.
The rains sweep the sky from end to end.
Jasmines in the wet untamable wind revel
in their own perfume. The cloud-hidden
stars thrill in secret. Let me fill to the full
my heart with nothing but my own
depth of joy.”

"Fear not the strangeness you feel.
The future must enter you
Long before it happens.
Just wait for the birth.
For the hour of new clarity."

“Retrato"

Eu não tinha este rosto de hoje,
assim calmo, assim triste, assim magro,
nem estes olhos tão vazios,
nem o lábio amargo.

Eu não tinha estas mãos sem força,
tão paradas e frias e mortas;
eu não tinha este coração
que nem se mostra.

 
Eu não dei por esta mudança,
tão simples, tão certa, tão fácil:
- Em que espelho ficou perdida
a minha face?

"Being born a woman is my awful tragedy. From the moment I was conceived I was doomed to sprout breasts and ovaries rather than penis and scrotum; to have my whole circle of action, thought and feeling rigidly circumscribed by my inescapable feminity. Yes, my consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars-to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording-all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yet, God, I want to talk to everybody I can as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night..."

"Tout reste en l’état, en suspense.
Avant l’amour, il n’y a rien.
Aprés l’amour, il y a tout.
On est lá, juste dans le passage.
Cela peut durer.
Cela n’a pas de nom.”

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

“When it turns out that the greatest enemy of truth is not falsehood, but gibberish, it turns out that the greatest intellectual virtue is not deductive brilliance or factual erudition, but common sense. When it turns out that the greatest enemy of decency is not hatred, but arbitrariness, it turns out that the greatest moral virtue is not kindness or mercy, but perseverance. When it turns out that the greatest enemy of good taste is not vulgarity, but ostentation, it turns out that the greatest aesthetic virtue is not elegance or refinement, but moderation. And when it turns out that the greatest enemy of civilization is not barbarity, but infantilism, it turns out that the greatest cultural virtue is not sophistication, but integrity.”

“I feel completely detached from any country, any group. I am a metaphysically displaced person.”

“The centuries have grown heavy and weigh upon the moment. We are more corrupt than all the ages, more decomposed than all the empires. Our exhaustion interprets history, our breathlessness makes us hear the death rattle of nations... the curtain of the universe is moth-eaten, and through its holes we see nothing, now, but masks and ghosts...”

“The Dying Animal”

“The only obsession everyone wants: 'love.' People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you're whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You're whole, and then you're cracked open."

“O Olho Cosmológico”

“Diz que sou um estudante. Com isso quer dizer, sem dúvida, que estudo a vida. Sim, é isso, o estudo da vida. Tenho de andar muito, ir aqui e ali, perder tempo, parecer que me estou a divertir enquanto, durante todo esse tempo, estou certamente a estudar a vida, a estudar as pessoas."

“When I speak of poetry I am not thinking of it as genre. Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality. So poetry becomes a philosophy to guide a man throughout his life.”

“The Window”

“Your body is away from me
but there is a window open
from my heart to yours.
From this window, like the moon
I keep sending news secretly.”