As últimas linhas do poema em prosa

número IV, de Ruinas, um pequeno/belo livro de Antonio Sáez Delgado: "Con los años, descubrimos que sólo se viaja en el tiempo, y aprendemos a domesticar los recuerdos y a construirlos a nuestra imagen y semejanza. No sabemos quê se esconde tras cada día de lus pálida que nos acoge como huespédes pasajeros, como los frágiles habitantes que desafian al polvo que cubre irremisiblemente el mundo."

Quando um bom poeta é também um crítico arguto (e generoso):

Siegfried Sassoon (fardado na imagem) a propósito da poesia de Isaac Rosenberg (o óleo), um dos poetas que não sobreviveu à I Guerra Mundial: "In reading and re-reading these poems I have been strongly impressed by their depth and integrity. I have found a sensitive and vigorous mind energetically interested in experimenting with language and I have recognized in Rosenberg a fruitful fusion between English and Hebrew culture. Behind all his poetry there is a radical quality - biblical and prophetic. Scriptural and sculptural are the epithets I would apply to him. His experiments were a strenuous effort for impassioned expression; his imagination had a sinewy and muscular aliveness; often he saw things in terms of sculpture, but he did not carve or chisel; he modelled words with fierce energy and aspiration, finding ecstasy in form, dreaming in grandeurs of superb light and deep shadow; his poetic visions are mostly in sombre colors and looming sculptural masses, molten and amply wrought."

Edwin Muir, a propósito de uma Anunciação:

"I remember stopping for a long time one day to look at a little plaque on the wall of a house in the Via degli Artisti [Rome], representing the Annunciation. An angel and a young girl, their bodies inclined towards each other, their knees bent as if they were overcome by love, 'tutto tremante', gazed upon each other like Dante's pair; and that representation of a human love so intense that it could not reach farther seemed the perfect earthly symbol of the love that passes understanding. A religion that dared to show forth such a mystery for everyone to see would have shocked the congregations of the north, would have seemed a sort of blasphemy, perhaps even an indecency. But here it was publicly shown, as Christ showed himself on the earth. That these images should appear everywhere, reminding everyone of the Incarnation, seemed to me natural and right ... This open declaration was to me the very mark of Christianity, distinguishing it from the older religions."

Quando muitos de nós olhamos para trás

e nos interrogamos sobre os, tantas vezes inesperados, caminhos percorridos, eis o que escreveu o poeta Edwin Muir (1887-1959), a propósito do mistério da vida: "As I look back on the part of the mystery which is my own life, my own fable, what I am most aware of is that we receive more than we can ever give; we receive it from the past, on which we draw every breath, but also - and this is a point of faith - from the Source of the mystery itself, by the means which religious people call Grace."

A propósito dos seus próprios poemas

escreveu, um dia, Dylan Thomas: "I read somewhere of a shepherd who, when asked why he made, from within fairy rings, ritual observances to the moon to protect his flocks, replied: 'I'd be a damn' fool if I didn't!' These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I'd be a damn' fool if they weren't.'"

Sobre Keith Douglas (1920-1944),

morto durante a II Guerra Mundial, escreveu, com a inteligência e a sensibilidade que lhe eram características, Ted Hughes: "He has not simply added poems to poetry, or evolved a sophistication. He is a renovador of language. It is not that he uses words in jolting combinations, or with titanic extravagance, or curious precision. His triumph lies in the way he renews the simplicity of ordinary talk, and he does so by infusing every word with a burning exploratory freshness of mind - partly exhilaration at speaking the forbidden thing, partly sheer casual ease of penetration. The music that goes along with this, the unresting variety of intonation and movement within his patterns, is the natural path of much confident, candid thinking..."

Para quem não pôde estar presente

aqui ficam algumas imagens da apresentação do meu Essencial sobre Walt Whitman. Na bela sala da biblioteca da Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda. Na mesa, presidida por Rui Carp, para além de mim, claro, está o Mário Jorge Torres que apresentou o livro.