Andam por aí...Domingos Névoa (que o tribunal considerou culpado de ter tentado corromper Sá Fernandes), foi nomeado Presidente da Braval. O "coro das virgens" levantou-se em peso e tem escrito tudo e mais alguma coisa contra esta nomeação. Não a defendo, o que me parece estranho é que (quase) ninguém levante a voz contra a presença de Sá Fernandes no executivo camarário. 9 assessores, uma Secretária e um coordenador de gabinete, que custam quase 21 mil Euros mês, mais o ordenado e mordomias do Sr Vereador, já para não falar nos largos milhões de euros que nos custou antes de por os pés na CML, a sua postura absolutamente hipócrita e interesseira relativamente ao BE e aos Lisboetas. Lembro-me sempre da anedota da "Realidade virtual": Um puto pergunta ao pai - Ó pai, o que é a realidade virtual - Bem, isso é um pouco difícil de explicar - respondeu o pai - Vamos ver um exemplo. Vai perguntar à tua irmã se por 500 contos ela é capaz de dormir com o vizinho aqui do lado. O puto assim fez. Chegou ao pé da irmã e perguntou: - Ó mana, por 500 contos tu eras capaz de dormir com o vizinho do lado? - Sim, respondeu a irmã, por 500 contos era capaz. Dormia, sim. O puto voltou para junto do pai e contou-lhe o resultado da consulta à irmã. Então o pai mandou-o fazer a mesma pergunta à mãe. O puto assim fez: - Ó mãe, por 500 contos tu eras capaz de dormir com o vizinho do lado? - Bem, respondeu a mãe, por 500 contos eu era capaz. O puto voltou junto do pai e disse: - Ó pai, a mãe também disse que sim!- Estás a ver, meu filho, virtualmente nós temos 1000 contos cá em casa. Na realidade temos duas p...
terça-feira, 31 de março de 2009
Música - Undercover (Of The Night)
Rolling Stones, a "extended mix"
Hear the screams of Center 42
Loud enough to bust your brains out
The opposition's tongue is cut in two
Keep off the street 'cause you're in danger
One hundred thousand disparus
Lost in the jails in South America
Cuddle up baby
Cuddle up tight
Cuddle up baby
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover of the night
The sex police are out there on the streets
Make sure the pass laws are not broken
The race militia has got itchy fingers
All the way from New York back to Africa
Cuddle up baby
Keep it all out of sight
Cuddle up baby
Sleep with all out of sight
Cuddle up baby
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover
Undercover
Undercover
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover of the night
All the young men they've been rounded up
And sent to camps back in the jungle
And people whisper people double-talk
And once proud fathers act so humble
All the young girls they have got the blues
They're heading on back to Center 42
Keep it undercover
Keep it all out of sight
Keep it undercover
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover of the night
Down in the bars the girls are painted blue
Done up in lace, done up in rubber
The John's are jerky little G.I. Joe's
On R&R from Cuba and Russia
The smell of sex, the smell of suicide
All these things I can't keep inside
Undercover
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover of the night
Undercover of the night
Undercover of the night
Undercover
Undercover
Undercover of the night
Hear the screams of Center 42
Loud enough to bust your brains out
The opposition's tongue is cut in two
Keep off the street 'cause you're in danger
One hundred thousand disparus
Lost in the jails in South America
Cuddle up baby
Cuddle up tight
Cuddle up baby
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover of the night
The sex police are out there on the streets
Make sure the pass laws are not broken
The race militia has got itchy fingers
All the way from New York back to Africa
Cuddle up baby
Keep it all out of sight
Cuddle up baby
Sleep with all out of sight
Cuddle up baby
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover
Undercover
Undercover
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover of the night
All the young men they've been rounded up
And sent to camps back in the jungle
And people whisper people double-talk
And once proud fathers act so humble
All the young girls they have got the blues
They're heading on back to Center 42
Keep it undercover
Keep it all out of sight
Keep it undercover
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover of the night
Down in the bars the girls are painted blue
Done up in lace, done up in rubber
The John's are jerky little G.I. Joe's
On R&R from Cuba and Russia
The smell of sex, the smell of suicide
All these things I can't keep inside
Undercover
Keep it all out of sight
Undercover of the night
Undercover of the night
Undercover of the night
Undercover
Undercover
Undercover of the night
Etiquetas:
música,
Rolling Stones
Música - She Was Hot
Rolling Stones, vistos pela camara de Martin Scorsese em 2006
Etiquetas:
Martin Scorsese,
música,
Rolling Stones
Disco - Undercover
A "re-invenção" dos Rolling Stones em 1983. Muito diferente de tudo o que a banda tinha feito até á data, continua a dividir fans e critica, mais de 25 anos depois, e dividiu inclusivé Jagger e Richards. Uma sonoridade "adaptada aos novos tempos", longe da matriz base da banda. Continuo a achá-lo um disco notável, naquele que é o trabalho que menos "soa" a Stones.
Etiquetas:
Disco,
Rolling Stones
Eleições 2009 - III - Legislativas
Ao contrário daquilo que é "vox populi" (alimentada pelas declarações dos lideres partidários) não são as eleições onde se escolhe o Primeiro Ministro. O que se escolhe são 230 deputados. Mandam as regras que o Presidente da República convide o lider do partido (ou coligação) mais votado para formar governo. No plano teórico, nada obriga esse lider a ser Primeiro Ministro, assim como nada o obriga a formar governo (embora na prática isso aconteça). A formação do Governo é da exclusiva responsabilidade do Primeiro Ministro e a escolha de Ministros e Secretários de Estado, nada tem a ver com os deputados eleitos (ao contrário de certos países, em que apenas deputados eleitos podem ser membros do governo). O nosso sistema (tal como em muitos outros sitios) permite coligações e arranjos pós-eleitorais para a formação do governo.
Mais 21 Dias Para Quê ?
A AdC afirma que o relatório sobre o mercado de combustíveis ficou hoje pronto (grande pontaria...), mas só será divulgado dia 21...
segunda-feira, 30 de março de 2009
O Regresso do Génio Ross Brawn
Pegou na "defunta" Honda, criou a Brawn GP, e em 4 meses percebeu melhor que ninguém os novos regulamentos da Formula Um, e conseguiu o que nenhuma equipa fazia desde 1954: Vencer a corrida de Estreia (Através de Jenson Button). Não contente juntou o 2º lugar de Rubens Barrichello , já no Sábado tinha obtido a "pole position" e o 2º lugar. Acredito que com o desenrolar da temporada, as equipes "mais ricas" vão-se "chegar á frente", mas esta já ninguém tira a Ross Brawn
domingo, 29 de março de 2009
Eleições 2009 - II - Autarquicas
Ainda sem data marcada, são (provavelmente) o 2º acto eleitoral mais "pessoal" (O primeiro é a escolha do Presidente da República). Muitas vezes é feita uma leitura nacional dos seus resultados, o que é um disparate. Desde logo é uma eleição em três partes (Câmara Municipal, Assembleia Municipal e Juntas de Freguesia). Estão em jogo mais de 300 Presidentes de Camara, mais de 2000 vereadores. Quanto á Assembleia Municipal estamos a falar de mais de 6750 mandatos e quanto ás Juntas de Freguesia mais de 4100 presidências e mais de 34000 mandatos. Em sintese estamos a falar numa escolha de quase 50000 pessoas...É uma redundancia afirmar que cada caso é um caso, mas os Srs Politicos esquecem-se disso muitas vezes...
Poema - Sete Palmos de Terra
Regresso "á produção caseira". Escrito em Junho de 1996
A cabeça num saco de plástico
acompanha um olhar cáustico
Por vezes uma enorme vontade de rir
só para sentir
a ignorância e o desprezo
Na mão um cigarro aceso
a anunciar o fim da ilusão
nem tudo é sim ou não
Para quê sonhar
quando se tem de acordar ?
O futuro não voltará mais
e ninguém se preocupa para onde vais
Presa no passado
isolada
Podes ser arrogante
podes ter um ar esfusiante
mas sabes que na realidade
da grande cidade
Ninguém notaria
a tua falta dia após dia
Uns nascem
para fracassar
sabendo que um dia tudo vai terminar
Sete palmos debaixo da terra
Sete palmos debaixo da terra
A cabeça num saco de plástico
acompanha um olhar cáustico
Por vezes uma enorme vontade de rir
só para sentir
a ignorância e o desprezo
Na mão um cigarro aceso
a anunciar o fim da ilusão
nem tudo é sim ou não
Para quê sonhar
quando se tem de acordar ?
O futuro não voltará mais
e ninguém se preocupa para onde vais
Presa no passado
isolada
Podes ser arrogante
podes ter um ar esfusiante
mas sabes que na realidade
da grande cidade
Ninguém notaria
a tua falta dia após dia
Uns nascem
para fracassar
sabendo que um dia tudo vai terminar
Sete palmos debaixo da terra
Sete palmos debaixo da terra
Filme - Presumivel Inocente
Realizado em 1990 por Alan J Pakula, a partir do Best Seller de 1987 de Scott Turow. Harrison Ford (Rusty Sabich) é um promotor público, que se vê acusado do assassinato da sua amante, a advogada Carolyn Polhemus (Greta Sacchi). Mistura entre policial, thriller e filme de tribunal, mostra Pakula no seu campo de eleição, num filme assente numa boa história e com uma realização técnicamente imaculada. A produção de Sidney Lumet não é minimamente desprezível...
sábado, 28 de março de 2009
Não Se Pode Continuar Neste Clima
A quantidade de episódios cujo protagonista é o Primeiro Ministro (Licenciatura, obras indevidamente assinadas por si, favorecimento fiscal na compra de habitação própria, enriquecimento ilícito, Freeport) arrastam-se "ad nauseum". Parece-me claro que não podem existir meios termos. Ou José Socrates forjou uma licenciatura, ou não. Ou José Socrates assinou o que não podia, ou não. Ou José Socrates teve beneficios fiscais, ou não. Ou José Socrates pode comprovar o seu património, ou não. Ou José Socrates é corrupto, ou não. Se José Socrates é inocente, alguém tem de ser punido exemplarmente por manchar em primeiro lugar o nome do cidadão. Se José Socrates é culpado, tem de ser punido. Como é que o cidadão comum pode confiar numa justiça, que nem em casos que envolvem a 3ª figura da hierarquia do Estado actua ?
Serve Para Quê ?
Confesso que esta "manifestação folclórica"e outras do género (cujo supra sumo da aberração é o pseudo dia sem carros) não me entusiasmam minimamente. Fico sempre com a ideia que são uma espécie de politicamente correcto para aliviar consciências pesadas...
Eleições 2009 - I - Europeias
O Parlamento Europeu é actualmente constituido por 785 deputados, sendo 24 Portugueses (Este ano o nº de deputados será reduzido para 736, passando Portugal a ter 22). 7 de Junho é o dia escolhido pelo nosso Presidente para o acto eleitoral deste ano. As oposições consideram estas eleições como um bom momento para mostrar "cartões" ao governo...O cidadão comum encara este acto eleitoral com enorme distância, sendo quase uma coisa "obscura". Pouca informação, muita desinformação, demasiado "ruído", contribuem para uma eleição quase marginal (em 2004, menos de 40% dos Portugueses votaram). Nada indica que o cenário seja alterado. Principais responsáveis? Os Srs Politicos...
Livro - Absalão, Absalão
Escrito em 1936 por William Faulkner é um dos mais espantosos (e estudados) livros do Século XX. A sua ligação ao segundo livro de Samuel é plenamente assumida, nesta história assente na tragédia familiar de Thomas Sutpen, a qual envolve 4 gerações. Tudo começa com um mistério: Porque motivo o seu filho Henry matou o seu amigo Charles e pretendente da sua irmã Julia?. O resto fica para descobrir neste enorme livro.
Etiquetas:
livro,
William Faulkner
Música - The Stolen Child
Waterboys, um original de Fisherman´s Blues (1988). O poema é de W B Yeats, incluido em The Wanderings of Oison and Other Poems de 1889.
Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats;
There we've hid out faery vats,
Full of berries
And the reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters of the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
From a world more full of weeping than he can understand.
Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats;
There we've hid out faery vats,
Full of berries
And the reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters of the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
From a world more full of weeping than he can understand.
sexta-feira, 27 de março de 2009
Galp Share - Lugares Vazios
Gosto particularmente deste anúncio. A música é Mad World de Gary Jules (album de 2001 Trading Snakeoil for Wolftickets), um cover de um original dos Tears for Fears (album The Hurting de 1983). Fica o anúncio e a música na sua totalidade
Lula da Silva
O Presidente Brasileiro imputou aos "brancos, de olhos azuis" a responsabilidade da actual crise financeira mundial. Independentemente de ter (ou não) razão, é uma declaração inacreditável. Se alguém responsabilizasse os "negros, de olhos escuros" pela crise, era imediatamente cruxificado e a sua cabeça era pedida para ser exibida como troféu...
Um País de Loucos ?
Marinho Pinho, Bastonário da Ordem dos Advogados, escreve no seu orgão oficial que o caso Freeport começa numa pseudo carta anónima, e que membros do PSD e CDS são os responsáveis primeiros (aliados a jornalistas e membros da policia) pelo caso Freeport, e que basicamente é tudo uma fraude. A TVI apresenta uma gravação audio, onde o Primeiro Ministro é claramente acusado de corrupção. O Gabinete de José Socrates processa a TVI. Alguém me explica o que se passa?
quinta-feira, 26 de março de 2009
Irrita-me Profundamente
Que o nome do Sr Professor Jorge Miranda, ande "em bolandas" nesta estúpida guerra PS-PSD, relativamente ao nome do futuro Provedor da Justiça. Foi meu professor de Ciência Política, é um académico brilhante e uma pessoa excepcional. Sempre gostei de politica (e sempre odiei politiquices) e se alguém me fez "aumentar a paixão", foi efectivamente o Sr Professor (Declaração de interesses: Tive 14 de nota final...)
O Regresso do Sr Jacques
de la Palisse, na forma do Ministro da Administração Interna Rui Pereira. O relatório de segurança interna afirma que a criminalidade violenta cresceu 10.7% (2008 vs 2007). A justificação do Sr Ministro é a seguinte: 2oo7 foi um ano muito bom (dentro do género, digo eu...), logo 2008 ressentiu-se disso..."No Comments"....
Música - Porcelina Of The Vast Oceans
Smashing Pumpkins, um original de Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness
Etiquetas:
música,
Smashing Pumpkins
Poema - The Ballad of Reading Gaol
I
HE did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.
He walked amongst the Trial Men
In a suit of shabby grey;
A cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay;
But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.
I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every drifting cloud that went
With sails of silver by.
I walked, with other souls in pain,
Within another ring,
And was wondering if the man had done
A great or little thing,
When a voice behind me whispered low,
"That fellow's got to swing."
Dear Christ! the very prison walls
Suddenly seemed to reel,
And the sky above my head became
Like a casque of scorching steel;
And, though I was a soul in pain,
My pain I could not feel.
I only knew what hunted thought
Quickened his step, and why
He looked upon the garish day
With such a wistful eye;
The man had killed the thing he loved
And so he had to die.
Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold.
Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.
He does not die a death of shame
On a day of dark disgrace,
Nor have a noose about his neck,
Nor a cloth upon his face,
Nor drop feet foremost through the floor
Into an empty place
He does not sit with silent men
Who watch him night and day;
Who watch him when he tries to weep,
And when he tries to pray;
Who watch him lest himself should rob
The prison of its prey.
He does not wake at dawn to see
Dread figures throng his room,
The shivering Chaplain robed in white,
The Sheriff stern with gloom,
And the Governor all in shiny black,
With the yellow face of Doom.
He does not rise in piteous haste
To put on convict-clothes,
While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats, and notes
Each new and nerve-twitched pose,
Fingering a watch whose little ticks
Are like horrible hammer-blows.
He does not know that sickening thirst
That sands one's throat, before
The hangman with his gardener's gloves
Slips through the padded door,
And binds one with three leathern thongs,
That the throat may thirst no more.
He does not bend his head to hear
The Burial Office read,
Nor, while the terror of his soul
Tells him he is not dead,
Cross his own coffin, as he moves
Into the hideous shed.
He does not stare upon the air
Through a little roof of glass;
He does not pray with lips of clay
For his agony to pass;
Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek
The kiss of Caiaphas.
II
Six weeks our guardsman walked the yard,
In a suit of shabby grey:
His cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay,
But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.
I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every wandering cloud that trailed
Its ravelled fleeces by.
He did not wring his hands, as do
Those witless men who dare
To try to rear the changeling Hope
In the cave of black Despair:
He only looked upon the sun,
And drank the morning air.
He did not wring his hands nor weep,
Nor did he peek or pine,
But he drank the air as though it held
Some healthful anodyne;
With open mouth he drank the sun
As though it had been wine!
And I and all the souls in pain,
Who tramped the other ring,
Forgot if we ourselves had done
A great or little thing,
And watched with gaze of dull amaze
The man who had to swing.
And strange it was to see him pass
With a step so light and gay,
And strange it was to see him look
So wistfully at the day,
And strange it was to think that he
Had such a debt to pay.
For oak and elm have pleasant leaves
That in the spring-time shoot:
But grim to see is the gallows-tree,
With its adder-bitten root,
And, green or dry, a man must die
Before it bears its fruit!
The loftiest place is that seat of grace
For which all worldlings try:
But who would stand in hempen band
Upon a scaffold high,
And through a murderer's collar take
His last look at the sky?
It is sweet to dance to violins
When Love and Life are fair:
To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes
Is delicate and rare:
But it is not sweet with nimble feet
To dance upon the air!
So with curious eyes and sick surmise
We watched him day by day,
And wondered if each one of us
Would end the self-same way,
For none can tell to what red Hell
His sightless soul may stray.
At last the dead man walked no more
Amongst the Trial Men,
And I knew that he was standing up
In the black dock's dreadful pen,
And that never would I see his face
In God's sweet world again.
Like two doomed ships that pass in storm
We had crossed each other's way:
But we made no sign, we said no word,
We had no word to say;
For we did not meet in the holy night,
But in the shameful day.
A prison wall was round us both,
Two outcast men were we:
The world had thrust us from its heart,
And God from out His care:
And the iron gin that waits for Sin
Had caught us in its snare.
III
In Debtors' Yard the stones are hard,
And the dripping wall is high,
So it was there he took the air
Beneath the leaden sky,
And by each side a Warder walked,
For fear the man might die.
Or else he sat with those who watched
His anguish night and day;
Who watched him when he rose to weep,
And when he crouched to pray;
Who watched him lest himself should rob
Their scaffold of its prey.
The Governor was strong upon
The Regulations Act:
The Doctor said that Death was but
A scientific fact:
And twice a day the Chaplain called
And left a little tract.
And twice a day he smoked his pipe,
And drank his quart of beer:
His soul was resolute, and held
No hiding-place for fear;
He often said that he was glad
The hangman's hands were near.
But why he said so strange a thing
No Warder dared to ask:
For he to whom a watcher's doom
Is given as his task,
Must set a lock upon his lips,
And make his face a mask.
Or else he might be moved, and try
To comfort or console:
And what should Human Pity do
Pent up in Murderers' Hole?
What word of grace in such a place
Could help a brother's soul?
With slouch and swing around the ring
We trod the Fool's Parade!
We did not care: we knew we were
The Devil's Own Brigade:
And shaven head and feet of lead
Make a merry masquerade.
We tore the tarry rope to shreds
With blunt and bleeding nails;
We rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors,
And cleaned the shining rails:
And, rank by rank, we soaped the plank,
And clattered with the pails.
We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones,
We turned the dusty drill:
We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns,
And sweated on the mill:
But in the heart of every man
Terror was lying still.
So still it lay that every day
Crawled like a weed-clogged wave:
And we forgot the bitter lot
That waits for fool and knave,
Till once, as we tramped in from work,
We passed an open grave.
With yawning mouth the yellow hole
Gaped for a living thing;
The very mud cried out for blood
To the thirsty asphalte ring:
And we knew that ere one dawn grew fair
Some prisoner had to swing.
Right in we went, with soul intent
On Death and Dread and Doom:
The hangman, with his little bag,
Went shuffling through the gloom
And each man trembled as he crept
Into his numbered tomb.
That night the empty corridors
Were full of forms of Fear,
And up and down the iron town
Stole feet we could not hear,
And through the bars that hide the stars
White faces seemed to peer.
He lay as one who lies and dreams
In a pleasant meadow-land,
The watcher watched him as he slept,
And could not understand
How one could sleep so sweet a sleep
With a hangman close at hand?
But there is no sleep when men must weep
Who never yet have wept:
So we -- the fool, the fraud, the knave --
That endless vigil kept,
And through each brain on hands of pain
Another's terror crept.
Alas! it is a fearful thing
To feel another's guilt!
For, right within, the sword of Sin
Pierced to its poisoned hilt,
And as molten lead were the tears we shed
For the blood we had not spilt.
The Warders with their shoes of felt
Crept by each padlocked door,
And peeped and saw, with eyes of awe,
Grey figures on the floor,
And wondered why men knelt to pray
Who never prayed before.
All through the night we knelt and prayed,
Mad mourners of a corpse!
The troubled plumes of midnight were
The plumes upon a hearse:
And bitter wine upon a sponge
Was the savour of Remorse.
The cock crew, the red cock crew,
But never came the day:
And crooked shape of Terror crouched,
In the corners where we lay:
And each evil sprite that walks by night
Before us seemed to play.
They glided past, they glided fast,
Like travellers through a mist:
They mocked the moon in a rigadoon
Of delicate turn and twist,
And with formal pace and loathsome grace
The phantoms kept their tryst.
With mop and mow, we saw them go,
Slim shadows hand in hand:
About, about, in ghostly rout
They trod a saraband:
And the damned grotesques made arabesques,
Like the wind upon the sand!
With the pirouettes of marionettes,
They tripped on pointed tread:
But with flutes of Fear they filled the ear,
As their grisly masque they led,
And loud they sang, and loud they sang,
For they sang to wake the dead.
"Oho!" they cried, "The world is wide,
But fettered limbs go lame!
And once, or twice, to throw the dice
Is a gentlemanly game,
But he does not win who plays with Sin
In the secret House of Shame."
No things of air these antics were
That frolicked with such glee:
To men whose lives were held in gyves,
And whose feet might not go free,
Ah! wounds of Christ! they were living things,
Most terrible to see.
Around, around, they waltzed and wound;
Some wheeled in smirking pairs:
With the mincing step of demirep
Some sidled up the stairs:
And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer,
Each helped us at our prayers.
The morning wind began to moan,
But still the night went on:
Through its giant loom the web of gloom
Crept till each thread was spun:
And, as we prayed, we grew afraid
Of the Justice of the Sun.
The moaning wind went wandering round
The weeping prison-wall:
Till like a wheel of turning-steel
We felt the minutes crawl:
O moaning wind! what had we done
To have such a seneschal?
At last I saw the shadowed bars
Like a lattice wrought in lead,
Move right across the whitewashed wall
That faced my three-plank bed,
And I knew that somewhere in the world
God's dreadful dawn was red.
At six o'clock we cleaned our cells,
At seven all was still,
But the sough and swing of a mighty wing
The prison seemed to fill,
For the Lord of Death with icy breath
Had entered in to kill.
He did not pass in purple pomp,
Nor ride a moon-white steed.
Three yards of cord and a sliding board
Are all the gallows' need:
So with rope of shame the Herald came
To do the secret deed.
We were as men who through a fen
Of filthy darkness grope:
We did not dare to breathe a prayer,
Or give our anguish scope:
Something was dead in each of us,
And what was dead was Hope.
For Man's grim Justice goes its way,
And will not swerve aside:
It slays the weak, it slays the strong,
It has a deadly stride:
With iron heel it slays the strong,
The monstrous parricide!
We waited for the stroke of eight:
Each tongue was thick with thirst:
For the stroke of eight is the stroke of Fate
That makes a man accursed,
And Fate will use a running noose
For the best man and the worst.
We had no other thing to do,
Save to wait for the sign to come:
So, like things of stone in a valley lone,
Quiet we sat and dumb:
But each man's heart beat thick and quick
Like a madman on a drum!
With sudden shock the prison-clock
Smote on the shivering air,
And from all the gaol rose up a wail
Of impotent despair,
Like the sound that frightened marshes hear
From a leper in his lair.
And as one sees most fearful things
In the crystal of a dream,
We saw the greasy hempen rope
Hooked to the blackened beam,
And heard the prayer the hangman's snare
Strangled into a scream.
And all the woe that moved him so
That he gave that bitter cry,
And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,
None knew so well as I:
For he who live more lives than one
More deaths than one must die.
IV
There is no chapel on the day
On which they hang a man:
The Chaplain's heart is far too sick,
Or his face is far to wan,
Or there is that written in his eyes
Which none should look upon.
So they kept us close till nigh on noon,
And then they rang the bell,
And the Warders with their jingling keys
Opened each listening cell,
And down the iron stair we tramped,
Each from his separate Hell.
Out into God's sweet air we went,
But not in wonted way,
For this man's face was white with fear,
And that man's face was grey,
And I never saw sad men who looked
So wistfully at the day.
I never saw sad men who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
We prisoners called the sky,
And at every careless cloud that passed
In happy freedom by.
But their were those amongst us all
Who walked with downcast head,
And knew that, had each got his due,
They should have died instead:
He had but killed a thing that lived
Whilst they had killed the dead.
For he who sins a second time
Wakes a dead soul to pain,
And draws it from its spotted shroud,
And makes it bleed again,
And makes it bleed great gouts of blood
And makes it bleed in vain!
Like ape or clown, in monstrous garb
With crooked arrows starred,
Silently we went round and round
The slippery asphalte yard;
Silently we went round and round,
And no man spoke a word.
Silently we went round and round,
And through each hollow mind
The memory of dreadful things
Rushed like a dreadful wind,
An Horror stalked before each man,
And terror crept behind.
The Warders strutted up and down,
And kept their herd of brutes,
Their uniforms were spick and span,
And they wore their Sunday suits,
But we knew the work they had been at
By the quicklime on their boots.
For where a grave had opened wide,
There was no grave at all:
Only a stretch of mud and sand
By the hideous prison-wall,
And a little heap of burning lime,
That the man should have his pall.
For he has a pall, this wretched man,
Such as few men can claim:
Deep down below a prison-yard,
Naked for greater shame,
He lies, with fetters on each foot,
Wrapt in a sheet of flame!
And all the while the burning lime
Eats flesh and bone away,
It eats the brittle bone by night,
And the soft flesh by the day,
It eats the flesh and bones by turns,
But it eats the heart alway.
For three long years they will not sow
Or root or seedling there:
For three long years the unblessed spot
Will sterile be and bare,
And look upon the wondering sky
With unreproachful stare.
They think a murderer's heart would taint
Each simple seed they sow.
It is not true! God's kindly earth
Is kindlier than men know,
And the red rose would but blow more red,
The white rose whiter blow.
Out of his mouth a red, red rose!
Out of his heart a white!
For who can say by what strange way,
Christ brings his will to light,
Since the barren staff the pilgrim bore
Bloomed in the great Pope's sight?
But neither milk-white rose nor red
May bloom in prison air;
The shard, the pebble, and the flint,
Are what they give us there:
For flowers have been known to heal
A common man's despair.
So never will wine-red rose or white,
Petal by petal, fall
On that stretch of mud and sand that lies
By the hideous prison-wall,
To tell the men who tramp the yard
That God's Son died for all.
Yet though the hideous prison-wall
Still hems him round and round,
And a spirit man not walk by night
That is with fetters bound,
And a spirit may not weep that lies
In such unholy ground,
He is at peace -- this wretched man --
At peace, or will be soon:
There is no thing to make him mad,
Nor does Terror walk at noon,
For the lampless Earth in which he lies
Has neither Sun nor Moon.
They hanged him as a beast is hanged:
They did not even toll
A requiem that might have brought
Rest to his startled soul,
But hurriedly they took him out,
And hid him in a hole.
They stripped him of his canvas clothes,
And gave him to the flies;
They mocked the swollen purple throat
And the stark and staring eyes:
And with laughter loud they heaped the shroud
In which their convict lies.
The Chaplain would not kneel to pray
By his dishonoured grave:
Nor mark it with that blessed Cross
That Christ for sinners gave,
Because the man was one of those
Whom Christ came down to save.
Yet all is well; he has but passed
To Life's appointed bourne:
And alien tears will fill for him
Pity's long-broken urn,
For his mourner will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn.
V
I know not whether Laws be right,
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in goal
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long.
But this I know, that every Law
That men have made for Man,
Since first Man took his brother's life,
And the sad world began,
But straws the wheat and saves the chaff
With a most evil fan.
This too I know -- and wise it were
If each could know the same --
That every prison that men build
Is built with bricks of shame,
And bound with bars lest Christ should see
How men their brothers maim.
With bars they blur the gracious moon,
And blind the goodly sun:
And they do well to hide their Hell,
For in it things are done
That Son of God nor son of Man
Ever should look upon!
The vilest deeds like poison weeds
Bloom well in prison-air:
It is only what is good in Man
That wastes and withers there:
Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,
And the Warder is Despair
For they starve the little frightened child
Till it weeps both night and day:
And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool,
And gibe the old and grey,
And some grow mad, and all grow bad,
And none a word may say.
Each narrow cell in which we dwell
Is foul and dark latrine,
And the fetid breath of living Death
Chokes up each grated screen,
And all, but Lust, is turned to dust
In Humanity's machine.
The brackish water that we drink
Creeps with a loathsome slime,
And the bitter bread they weigh in scales
Is full of chalk and lime,
And Sleep will not lie down, but walks
Wild-eyed and cries to Time.
But though lean Hunger and green Thirst
Like asp with adder fight,
We have little care of prison fare,
For what chills and kills outright
Is that every stone one lifts by day
Becomes one's heart by night.
With midnight always in one's heart,
And twilight in one's cell,
We turn the crank, or tear the rope,
Each in his separate Hell,
And the silence is more awful far
Than the sound of a brazen bell.
And never a human voice comes near
To speak a gentle word:
And the eye that watches through the door
Is pitiless and hard:
And by all forgot, we rot and rot,
With soul and body marred.
And thus we rust Life's iron chain
Degraded and alone:
And some men curse, and some men weep,
And some men make no moan:
But God's eternal Laws are kind
And break the heart of stone.
And every human heart that breaks,
In prison-cell or yard,
Is as that broken box that gave
Its treasure to the Lord,
And filled the unclean leper's house
With the scent of costliest nard.
Ah! happy day they whose hearts can break
And peace of pardon win!
How else may man make straight his plan
And cleanse his soul from Sin?
How else but through a broken heart
May Lord Christ enter in?
And he of the swollen purple throat.
And the stark and staring eyes,
Waits for the holy hands that took
The Thief to Paradise;
And a broken and a contrite heart
The Lord will not despise.
The man in red who reads the Law
Gave him three weeks of life,
Three little weeks in which to heal
His soul of his soul's strife,
And cleanse from every blot of blood
The hand that held the knife.
And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand,
The hand that held the steel:
For only blood can wipe out blood,
And only tears can heal:
And the crimson stain that was of Cain
Became Christ's snow-white seal.
VI
In Reading gaol by Reading town
There is a pit of shame,
And in it lies a wretched man
Eaten by teeth of flame,
In burning winding-sheet he lies,
And his grave has got no name.
And there, till Christ call forth the dead,
In silence let him lie:
No need to waste the foolish tear,
Or heave the windy sigh:
The man had killed the thing he loved,
And so he had to die.
And all men kill the thing they love,
By all let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
Oscar Wilde (1898)
HE did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.
He walked amongst the Trial Men
In a suit of shabby grey;
A cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay;
But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.
I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every drifting cloud that went
With sails of silver by.
I walked, with other souls in pain,
Within another ring,
And was wondering if the man had done
A great or little thing,
When a voice behind me whispered low,
"That fellow's got to swing."
Dear Christ! the very prison walls
Suddenly seemed to reel,
And the sky above my head became
Like a casque of scorching steel;
And, though I was a soul in pain,
My pain I could not feel.
I only knew what hunted thought
Quickened his step, and why
He looked upon the garish day
With such a wistful eye;
The man had killed the thing he loved
And so he had to die.
Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold.
Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.
He does not die a death of shame
On a day of dark disgrace,
Nor have a noose about his neck,
Nor a cloth upon his face,
Nor drop feet foremost through the floor
Into an empty place
He does not sit with silent men
Who watch him night and day;
Who watch him when he tries to weep,
And when he tries to pray;
Who watch him lest himself should rob
The prison of its prey.
He does not wake at dawn to see
Dread figures throng his room,
The shivering Chaplain robed in white,
The Sheriff stern with gloom,
And the Governor all in shiny black,
With the yellow face of Doom.
He does not rise in piteous haste
To put on convict-clothes,
While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats, and notes
Each new and nerve-twitched pose,
Fingering a watch whose little ticks
Are like horrible hammer-blows.
He does not know that sickening thirst
That sands one's throat, before
The hangman with his gardener's gloves
Slips through the padded door,
And binds one with three leathern thongs,
That the throat may thirst no more.
He does not bend his head to hear
The Burial Office read,
Nor, while the terror of his soul
Tells him he is not dead,
Cross his own coffin, as he moves
Into the hideous shed.
He does not stare upon the air
Through a little roof of glass;
He does not pray with lips of clay
For his agony to pass;
Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek
The kiss of Caiaphas.
II
Six weeks our guardsman walked the yard,
In a suit of shabby grey:
His cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay,
But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.
I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every wandering cloud that trailed
Its ravelled fleeces by.
He did not wring his hands, as do
Those witless men who dare
To try to rear the changeling Hope
In the cave of black Despair:
He only looked upon the sun,
And drank the morning air.
He did not wring his hands nor weep,
Nor did he peek or pine,
But he drank the air as though it held
Some healthful anodyne;
With open mouth he drank the sun
As though it had been wine!
And I and all the souls in pain,
Who tramped the other ring,
Forgot if we ourselves had done
A great or little thing,
And watched with gaze of dull amaze
The man who had to swing.
And strange it was to see him pass
With a step so light and gay,
And strange it was to see him look
So wistfully at the day,
And strange it was to think that he
Had such a debt to pay.
For oak and elm have pleasant leaves
That in the spring-time shoot:
But grim to see is the gallows-tree,
With its adder-bitten root,
And, green or dry, a man must die
Before it bears its fruit!
The loftiest place is that seat of grace
For which all worldlings try:
But who would stand in hempen band
Upon a scaffold high,
And through a murderer's collar take
His last look at the sky?
It is sweet to dance to violins
When Love and Life are fair:
To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes
Is delicate and rare:
But it is not sweet with nimble feet
To dance upon the air!
So with curious eyes and sick surmise
We watched him day by day,
And wondered if each one of us
Would end the self-same way,
For none can tell to what red Hell
His sightless soul may stray.
At last the dead man walked no more
Amongst the Trial Men,
And I knew that he was standing up
In the black dock's dreadful pen,
And that never would I see his face
In God's sweet world again.
Like two doomed ships that pass in storm
We had crossed each other's way:
But we made no sign, we said no word,
We had no word to say;
For we did not meet in the holy night,
But in the shameful day.
A prison wall was round us both,
Two outcast men were we:
The world had thrust us from its heart,
And God from out His care:
And the iron gin that waits for Sin
Had caught us in its snare.
III
In Debtors' Yard the stones are hard,
And the dripping wall is high,
So it was there he took the air
Beneath the leaden sky,
And by each side a Warder walked,
For fear the man might die.
Or else he sat with those who watched
His anguish night and day;
Who watched him when he rose to weep,
And when he crouched to pray;
Who watched him lest himself should rob
Their scaffold of its prey.
The Governor was strong upon
The Regulations Act:
The Doctor said that Death was but
A scientific fact:
And twice a day the Chaplain called
And left a little tract.
And twice a day he smoked his pipe,
And drank his quart of beer:
His soul was resolute, and held
No hiding-place for fear;
He often said that he was glad
The hangman's hands were near.
But why he said so strange a thing
No Warder dared to ask:
For he to whom a watcher's doom
Is given as his task,
Must set a lock upon his lips,
And make his face a mask.
Or else he might be moved, and try
To comfort or console:
And what should Human Pity do
Pent up in Murderers' Hole?
What word of grace in such a place
Could help a brother's soul?
With slouch and swing around the ring
We trod the Fool's Parade!
We did not care: we knew we were
The Devil's Own Brigade:
And shaven head and feet of lead
Make a merry masquerade.
We tore the tarry rope to shreds
With blunt and bleeding nails;
We rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors,
And cleaned the shining rails:
And, rank by rank, we soaped the plank,
And clattered with the pails.
We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones,
We turned the dusty drill:
We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns,
And sweated on the mill:
But in the heart of every man
Terror was lying still.
So still it lay that every day
Crawled like a weed-clogged wave:
And we forgot the bitter lot
That waits for fool and knave,
Till once, as we tramped in from work,
We passed an open grave.
With yawning mouth the yellow hole
Gaped for a living thing;
The very mud cried out for blood
To the thirsty asphalte ring:
And we knew that ere one dawn grew fair
Some prisoner had to swing.
Right in we went, with soul intent
On Death and Dread and Doom:
The hangman, with his little bag,
Went shuffling through the gloom
And each man trembled as he crept
Into his numbered tomb.
That night the empty corridors
Were full of forms of Fear,
And up and down the iron town
Stole feet we could not hear,
And through the bars that hide the stars
White faces seemed to peer.
He lay as one who lies and dreams
In a pleasant meadow-land,
The watcher watched him as he slept,
And could not understand
How one could sleep so sweet a sleep
With a hangman close at hand?
But there is no sleep when men must weep
Who never yet have wept:
So we -- the fool, the fraud, the knave --
That endless vigil kept,
And through each brain on hands of pain
Another's terror crept.
Alas! it is a fearful thing
To feel another's guilt!
For, right within, the sword of Sin
Pierced to its poisoned hilt,
And as molten lead were the tears we shed
For the blood we had not spilt.
The Warders with their shoes of felt
Crept by each padlocked door,
And peeped and saw, with eyes of awe,
Grey figures on the floor,
And wondered why men knelt to pray
Who never prayed before.
All through the night we knelt and prayed,
Mad mourners of a corpse!
The troubled plumes of midnight were
The plumes upon a hearse:
And bitter wine upon a sponge
Was the savour of Remorse.
The cock crew, the red cock crew,
But never came the day:
And crooked shape of Terror crouched,
In the corners where we lay:
And each evil sprite that walks by night
Before us seemed to play.
They glided past, they glided fast,
Like travellers through a mist:
They mocked the moon in a rigadoon
Of delicate turn and twist,
And with formal pace and loathsome grace
The phantoms kept their tryst.
With mop and mow, we saw them go,
Slim shadows hand in hand:
About, about, in ghostly rout
They trod a saraband:
And the damned grotesques made arabesques,
Like the wind upon the sand!
With the pirouettes of marionettes,
They tripped on pointed tread:
But with flutes of Fear they filled the ear,
As their grisly masque they led,
And loud they sang, and loud they sang,
For they sang to wake the dead.
"Oho!" they cried, "The world is wide,
But fettered limbs go lame!
And once, or twice, to throw the dice
Is a gentlemanly game,
But he does not win who plays with Sin
In the secret House of Shame."
No things of air these antics were
That frolicked with such glee:
To men whose lives were held in gyves,
And whose feet might not go free,
Ah! wounds of Christ! they were living things,
Most terrible to see.
Around, around, they waltzed and wound;
Some wheeled in smirking pairs:
With the mincing step of demirep
Some sidled up the stairs:
And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer,
Each helped us at our prayers.
The morning wind began to moan,
But still the night went on:
Through its giant loom the web of gloom
Crept till each thread was spun:
And, as we prayed, we grew afraid
Of the Justice of the Sun.
The moaning wind went wandering round
The weeping prison-wall:
Till like a wheel of turning-steel
We felt the minutes crawl:
O moaning wind! what had we done
To have such a seneschal?
At last I saw the shadowed bars
Like a lattice wrought in lead,
Move right across the whitewashed wall
That faced my three-plank bed,
And I knew that somewhere in the world
God's dreadful dawn was red.
At six o'clock we cleaned our cells,
At seven all was still,
But the sough and swing of a mighty wing
The prison seemed to fill,
For the Lord of Death with icy breath
Had entered in to kill.
He did not pass in purple pomp,
Nor ride a moon-white steed.
Three yards of cord and a sliding board
Are all the gallows' need:
So with rope of shame the Herald came
To do the secret deed.
We were as men who through a fen
Of filthy darkness grope:
We did not dare to breathe a prayer,
Or give our anguish scope:
Something was dead in each of us,
And what was dead was Hope.
For Man's grim Justice goes its way,
And will not swerve aside:
It slays the weak, it slays the strong,
It has a deadly stride:
With iron heel it slays the strong,
The monstrous parricide!
We waited for the stroke of eight:
Each tongue was thick with thirst:
For the stroke of eight is the stroke of Fate
That makes a man accursed,
And Fate will use a running noose
For the best man and the worst.
We had no other thing to do,
Save to wait for the sign to come:
So, like things of stone in a valley lone,
Quiet we sat and dumb:
But each man's heart beat thick and quick
Like a madman on a drum!
With sudden shock the prison-clock
Smote on the shivering air,
And from all the gaol rose up a wail
Of impotent despair,
Like the sound that frightened marshes hear
From a leper in his lair.
And as one sees most fearful things
In the crystal of a dream,
We saw the greasy hempen rope
Hooked to the blackened beam,
And heard the prayer the hangman's snare
Strangled into a scream.
And all the woe that moved him so
That he gave that bitter cry,
And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,
None knew so well as I:
For he who live more lives than one
More deaths than one must die.
IV
There is no chapel on the day
On which they hang a man:
The Chaplain's heart is far too sick,
Or his face is far to wan,
Or there is that written in his eyes
Which none should look upon.
So they kept us close till nigh on noon,
And then they rang the bell,
And the Warders with their jingling keys
Opened each listening cell,
And down the iron stair we tramped,
Each from his separate Hell.
Out into God's sweet air we went,
But not in wonted way,
For this man's face was white with fear,
And that man's face was grey,
And I never saw sad men who looked
So wistfully at the day.
I never saw sad men who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
We prisoners called the sky,
And at every careless cloud that passed
In happy freedom by.
But their were those amongst us all
Who walked with downcast head,
And knew that, had each got his due,
They should have died instead:
He had but killed a thing that lived
Whilst they had killed the dead.
For he who sins a second time
Wakes a dead soul to pain,
And draws it from its spotted shroud,
And makes it bleed again,
And makes it bleed great gouts of blood
And makes it bleed in vain!
Like ape or clown, in monstrous garb
With crooked arrows starred,
Silently we went round and round
The slippery asphalte yard;
Silently we went round and round,
And no man spoke a word.
Silently we went round and round,
And through each hollow mind
The memory of dreadful things
Rushed like a dreadful wind,
An Horror stalked before each man,
And terror crept behind.
The Warders strutted up and down,
And kept their herd of brutes,
Their uniforms were spick and span,
And they wore their Sunday suits,
But we knew the work they had been at
By the quicklime on their boots.
For where a grave had opened wide,
There was no grave at all:
Only a stretch of mud and sand
By the hideous prison-wall,
And a little heap of burning lime,
That the man should have his pall.
For he has a pall, this wretched man,
Such as few men can claim:
Deep down below a prison-yard,
Naked for greater shame,
He lies, with fetters on each foot,
Wrapt in a sheet of flame!
And all the while the burning lime
Eats flesh and bone away,
It eats the brittle bone by night,
And the soft flesh by the day,
It eats the flesh and bones by turns,
But it eats the heart alway.
For three long years they will not sow
Or root or seedling there:
For three long years the unblessed spot
Will sterile be and bare,
And look upon the wondering sky
With unreproachful stare.
They think a murderer's heart would taint
Each simple seed they sow.
It is not true! God's kindly earth
Is kindlier than men know,
And the red rose would but blow more red,
The white rose whiter blow.
Out of his mouth a red, red rose!
Out of his heart a white!
For who can say by what strange way,
Christ brings his will to light,
Since the barren staff the pilgrim bore
Bloomed in the great Pope's sight?
But neither milk-white rose nor red
May bloom in prison air;
The shard, the pebble, and the flint,
Are what they give us there:
For flowers have been known to heal
A common man's despair.
So never will wine-red rose or white,
Petal by petal, fall
On that stretch of mud and sand that lies
By the hideous prison-wall,
To tell the men who tramp the yard
That God's Son died for all.
Yet though the hideous prison-wall
Still hems him round and round,
And a spirit man not walk by night
That is with fetters bound,
And a spirit may not weep that lies
In such unholy ground,
He is at peace -- this wretched man --
At peace, or will be soon:
There is no thing to make him mad,
Nor does Terror walk at noon,
For the lampless Earth in which he lies
Has neither Sun nor Moon.
They hanged him as a beast is hanged:
They did not even toll
A requiem that might have brought
Rest to his startled soul,
But hurriedly they took him out,
And hid him in a hole.
They stripped him of his canvas clothes,
And gave him to the flies;
They mocked the swollen purple throat
And the stark and staring eyes:
And with laughter loud they heaped the shroud
In which their convict lies.
The Chaplain would not kneel to pray
By his dishonoured grave:
Nor mark it with that blessed Cross
That Christ for sinners gave,
Because the man was one of those
Whom Christ came down to save.
Yet all is well; he has but passed
To Life's appointed bourne:
And alien tears will fill for him
Pity's long-broken urn,
For his mourner will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn.
V
I know not whether Laws be right,
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in goal
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long.
But this I know, that every Law
That men have made for Man,
Since first Man took his brother's life,
And the sad world began,
But straws the wheat and saves the chaff
With a most evil fan.
This too I know -- and wise it were
If each could know the same --
That every prison that men build
Is built with bricks of shame,
And bound with bars lest Christ should see
How men their brothers maim.
With bars they blur the gracious moon,
And blind the goodly sun:
And they do well to hide their Hell,
For in it things are done
That Son of God nor son of Man
Ever should look upon!
The vilest deeds like poison weeds
Bloom well in prison-air:
It is only what is good in Man
That wastes and withers there:
Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,
And the Warder is Despair
For they starve the little frightened child
Till it weeps both night and day:
And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool,
And gibe the old and grey,
And some grow mad, and all grow bad,
And none a word may say.
Each narrow cell in which we dwell
Is foul and dark latrine,
And the fetid breath of living Death
Chokes up each grated screen,
And all, but Lust, is turned to dust
In Humanity's machine.
The brackish water that we drink
Creeps with a loathsome slime,
And the bitter bread they weigh in scales
Is full of chalk and lime,
And Sleep will not lie down, but walks
Wild-eyed and cries to Time.
But though lean Hunger and green Thirst
Like asp with adder fight,
We have little care of prison fare,
For what chills and kills outright
Is that every stone one lifts by day
Becomes one's heart by night.
With midnight always in one's heart,
And twilight in one's cell,
We turn the crank, or tear the rope,
Each in his separate Hell,
And the silence is more awful far
Than the sound of a brazen bell.
And never a human voice comes near
To speak a gentle word:
And the eye that watches through the door
Is pitiless and hard:
And by all forgot, we rot and rot,
With soul and body marred.
And thus we rust Life's iron chain
Degraded and alone:
And some men curse, and some men weep,
And some men make no moan:
But God's eternal Laws are kind
And break the heart of stone.
And every human heart that breaks,
In prison-cell or yard,
Is as that broken box that gave
Its treasure to the Lord,
And filled the unclean leper's house
With the scent of costliest nard.
Ah! happy day they whose hearts can break
And peace of pardon win!
How else may man make straight his plan
And cleanse his soul from Sin?
How else but through a broken heart
May Lord Christ enter in?
And he of the swollen purple throat.
And the stark and staring eyes,
Waits for the holy hands that took
The Thief to Paradise;
And a broken and a contrite heart
The Lord will not despise.
The man in red who reads the Law
Gave him three weeks of life,
Three little weeks in which to heal
His soul of his soul's strife,
And cleanse from every blot of blood
The hand that held the knife.
And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand,
The hand that held the steel:
For only blood can wipe out blood,
And only tears can heal:
And the crimson stain that was of Cain
Became Christ's snow-white seal.
VI
In Reading gaol by Reading town
There is a pit of shame,
And in it lies a wretched man
Eaten by teeth of flame,
In burning winding-sheet he lies,
And his grave has got no name.
And there, till Christ call forth the dead,
In silence let him lie:
No need to waste the foolish tear,
Or heave the windy sigh:
The man had killed the thing he loved,
And so he had to die.
And all men kill the thing they love,
By all let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
Oscar Wilde (1898)
Etiquetas:
dead can dance,
Poemas
Aprender Com O Sr Primeiro Ministro
Uma das especialidades de José Socrates é anunciar que vai fazer alguma coisa, e o autor deste blog resolveu seguir as suas pisadas: Nos próximos tempos vão ser publicados 12 posts sob o nome "Eleições 2009 ", 9 versando os partidos Políticos (PS, PPD-PSD, CDS-PP, PCP, Verdes, BE, MRPP, PNR e os Outros), e 3 referentes aos actos eleitorais (Legislativas, Autárquicas e Europeias).
Pilaretes e Parquimetros
Evidentemente que os passeios não são para estacionar, e efectivamente os pilaretes resolvem o problema. Quanto á questão de fundo (o estacionamento em Lisboa) não se resolve assim e muito menos com a colocação de parquimetros (Gostava que um dia a EMEL fosse "dissecada" a fundo desde o dia da sua constituição...)
quarta-feira, 25 de março de 2009
Música - Church Not Made With Hands
Waterboys
Bye-bye shadowlands
The term is over
And all the holidays have begun
Now she walks in fresh fields
Her tracks are on the land
She is everywhere and no place
When its dark and evening falls
She moves among men
They would seek to have her as a prize
But she is in the shadows
The ocean and the sand
She is everywhere and no place
Her church not made with hands
Not contained by man
She is dancing high as clouds
Faster than the arrow
As straight as any crows that flies
Accross great seas she travels
Up through rising lands
She is everywhere and no place
Her church not made with hands
Not contained by man
Isnt that a pretty sun
Setting in a pretty sky?
Will we stay and watch it darken?
Will we stay and watch it darken?
The church not made by hands
Not contained by man
That precious place
Unmade by man
Bye-bye shadowlands
The term is over
And all the holidays have begun
Now she walks in fresh fields
Her tracks are on the land
She is everywhere and no place
When its dark and evening falls
She moves among men
They would seek to have her as a prize
But she is in the shadows
The ocean and the sand
She is everywhere and no place
Her church not made with hands
Not contained by man
She is dancing high as clouds
Faster than the arrow
As straight as any crows that flies
Accross great seas she travels
Up through rising lands
She is everywhere and no place
Her church not made with hands
Not contained by man
Isnt that a pretty sun
Setting in a pretty sky?
Will we stay and watch it darken?
Will we stay and watch it darken?
The church not made by hands
Not contained by man
That precious place
Unmade by man
Disco - A Pagan Place
Disco de 1984 dos Waterboys. A excelência da escrita de Scott (onde o "sagrado" e o "profano" se aliam), alia-se a "uma música" com bases nas raízes irlandesas da banda, onde tudo é "misturado" com um bom gosto inquestionável, resultando num trabalho intemporal e grandioso. 25 anos depois continua magnífico.
Presunção e Água Benta...
O presidente da Autoridade da Concorrência (AdC), Manuel Sebastião, faz um balanço "muito positivo" do seu primeiro ano à frente da entidade e disse estar preparado para responder aos desafios dos próximos quatro anos.
terça-feira, 24 de março de 2009
Música - When Anger Shows
Editors
It creeps all over you like a dull ache
Think of all the things your hands could make
It pulls you to the ground like soaking wet gloves
The change in your face when anger shows
In that moment you realise
That something you thought would always be there will die
Like everything else
These thoughts I must not think of
Dreams I cant make sense of
I need you to tell me its ok
These thoughts I must not think of
Dreams I cant make sense of
I need you to tell me its ok
You are a sleeping lion in your bed
I will not wake you
You're the moment
Love has passed
We all must learn to hate you
You're a memory from before
Please don't let me forget you
You're the wolves at my door
In that moment you realise
That something you thought would always be there will die
Like everything else
These thoughts I must not think of
Dreams I cant make sense of
I need you to tell me its ok
These thoughts I must not think of
Dreams I cant make sense of
I need you to tell me its ok
How can you know what things are worth
If your hands wont move to do a days work?
How can you know what things are worth
If your hands wont move to do a days work?
How can you know what things are worth
If your hands wont move to do a days work?
How can you know what things are worth
If your hands wont move to do a days work?
How can you know what things are worth
If your hands wont move to do a days work?
How can you know what things are worth
If your hands wont move to do a days work?
How can you know...
These thoughts I must not think of
Dreams I cant make sense of
I need you to tell me its ok
These thoughts I must not think of
Dreams I cant make sense of
I need you to tell me its ok
It creeps all over you like a dull ache
Think of all the things your hands could make
It pulls you to the ground like soaking wet gloves
The change in your face when anger shows
In that moment you realise
That something you thought would always be there will die
Like everything else
These thoughts I must not think of
Dreams I cant make sense of
I need you to tell me its ok
These thoughts I must not think of
Dreams I cant make sense of
I need you to tell me its ok
You are a sleeping lion in your bed
I will not wake you
You're the moment
Love has passed
We all must learn to hate you
You're a memory from before
Please don't let me forget you
You're the wolves at my door
In that moment you realise
That something you thought would always be there will die
Like everything else
These thoughts I must not think of
Dreams I cant make sense of
I need you to tell me its ok
These thoughts I must not think of
Dreams I cant make sense of
I need you to tell me its ok
How can you know what things are worth
If your hands wont move to do a days work?
How can you know what things are worth
If your hands wont move to do a days work?
How can you know what things are worth
If your hands wont move to do a days work?
How can you know what things are worth
If your hands wont move to do a days work?
How can you know what things are worth
If your hands wont move to do a days work?
How can you know what things are worth
If your hands wont move to do a days work?
How can you know...
These thoughts I must not think of
Dreams I cant make sense of
I need you to tell me its ok
These thoughts I must not think of
Dreams I cant make sense of
I need you to tell me its ok
Disco - And End As A Start
Album de 2007 para os Editors. Seja "post-punk revival", "indie rock", ou qualquer outra coisa, é antes de tudo música bem feita, assente em guitarras (mas não só), na voz de Tom Smith e em textos ambiguos, mas de muito boa qualidade. Uma das boas bandas britânicas reveladas neste século XXI.
Se A Memória Não Me Falha
Está prometido pela AdC um relatório, até ao final deste mês, sobre o mercado de combustíveis...
Má Educação
A intenção do BE foi «fazer uma brincadeira sobre o ridículo a que fica exposto o serviço público, pela instrumentalização através de uma campanha de péssimo gosto democrático», disse ao SOL o dirigente do BE Jorge Costa. «A esquerda só pode responder com um humor muito afiado, quando se usa o serviço de rádio, as vozes dos seus profissionais e a sua imagem para fazer propaganda contra o protesto social que se avoluma no país», justificou. ??? Aliás a "brincadeira" do BE prima pelo bom gosto, e quanto ao humor, é no mínimo de fazer inveja a qualquer humorista que se preze...
segunda-feira, 23 de março de 2009
Música - White As Snow
U2, album de 2009, No Line On The Horizon
Where I came from there were no hills at all
The land was flat, the highways straight and wide
My brother and I would drive for hours
Like years instead of days
Our faces as pale as the dirty snow
Once I knew there was a love divine
Then came a time I thought it knew me not
Who can forgive forgiveness where forgiveness is not
Only the lamb as white as snow
And the water, it was icy
As it washed over me
And the moon shone above me
Now this dry ground it bears no fruit at all
Only poppies laugh under the crescent moon
The road refuses strangers
The land the seeds we sow
Where might we find the lamb as white as snow
As boys we would go hunting in the woods
To sleep the night shooting out the stars
Now the wolves are every passing stranger
Every face we cannot know
If only a heart could be as white as snow
If only a heart could be as white as snow
Where I came from there were no hills at all
The land was flat, the highways straight and wide
My brother and I would drive for hours
Like years instead of days
Our faces as pale as the dirty snow
Once I knew there was a love divine
Then came a time I thought it knew me not
Who can forgive forgiveness where forgiveness is not
Only the lamb as white as snow
And the water, it was icy
As it washed over me
And the moon shone above me
Now this dry ground it bears no fruit at all
Only poppies laugh under the crescent moon
The road refuses strangers
The land the seeds we sow
Where might we find the lamb as white as snow
As boys we would go hunting in the woods
To sleep the night shooting out the stars
Now the wolves are every passing stranger
Every face we cannot know
If only a heart could be as white as snow
If only a heart could be as white as snow
Música - MLK
U2 ao vivo, um original de The Unforgettable Fire de 1984
Sleep
Sleep tonight
And may your dreams
Be realized
If the thunder cloud
Passes rain
So let it rain
Rain down on me
Mmm...mmm...mmm...
So let it be
Mmm...mmm...mmm...
So let it be
Sleep
Sleep tonight
And may your dreams
Be realized
If the thundercloud
Passes rain
So let it rain
Let it rain
Rain on me
Sleep
Sleep tonight
And may your dreams
Be realized
If the thunder cloud
Passes rain
So let it rain
Rain down on me
Mmm...mmm...mmm...
So let it be
Mmm...mmm...mmm...
So let it be
Sleep
Sleep tonight
And may your dreams
Be realized
If the thundercloud
Passes rain
So let it rain
Let it rain
Rain on me
domingo, 22 de março de 2009
Ainda a Justiça Lusa
Pode parecer "embirração", mas não é, trata-se apenas de uma constatação. Alberto Costa foi o pior Ministro da Administração Interna que o país teve, desde o 25 de Abril. O que é que José Socrates esperava com a sua nomeação para a Justiça? Milagres?.
Cuidado Dr Portas
O líder do CDS-PP lembrou a semana passada que 40 por cento dos crimes violentos no ano passado foram cometidos por estrangeiros, pelo que avançou em Almada com a apresentação de um Plano de Segurança. Paulo Portas defende a admissão de mais 4.200 polícias e o aumento do cumprimento das penas, incluindo a expulsão para estrangeiros que cometam crimes graves. Dizer a verdade ofende as puritanas almas, especialmente aquelas de organizações de apoio a Emigrantes "totalmente independentes", patrocinadas pelo BE (Solidariedade Emigrante, Olho Vivo, p.ex)
Livro - A Peste Escarlate
Em 2013 uma doença dizimou quase na totalidade a humanidade. Cerca de 50 anos depois, James Howard Smith (um Professor Universitário) um dos raros sobreviventes da tragédia, conta aos seus netos histórias "desses tempos". Escrito em 1912 por Jack London, é um trabalho sobre a condição humana, escrito num registo muito visual. Quase cem anos depois de ter sido escrito, mantém (uma inquietante) actualidade.
sábado, 21 de março de 2009
Dia Mundial da Poesia
Neste dia, fica mais um poema do patrono deste blog, através do seu heteronimo Alberto Caeiro.
.
Sou um guardador de rebanhosSou um guardador de rebanhos.
O rebanho é os meus pensamentos
E os meus pensamentos são todos sensações.
Penso com os olhos e com os ouvidos
E com as mãos e os pés
E com o nariz e a boca.
Pensar numa flor é vê-la e cheirá-la
E comer um fruto é saber-lhe o sentido.
Por isso quando num dia de calor
Me sinto triste de gozá-lo tanto,
E me deito ao comprido na erva,
E fecho os olhos quentes,
Sinto todo o meu corpo deitado na realidade,
Sei da verdade e sou feliz.
Etiquetas:
Fernando Pessoa,
Poemas
Parlamento
De acordo com a edição de hoje do semanário Expresso, as obras (8 meses e 4 milhões de euros) levadas a cabo no nosso parlamento, tornaram-no no mais moderno do mundo. Lamento não estar feliz...Chamem-me o que quizerem, mas não passa de mais uma manifestação de provincianismo...
Filme - 11:14
Realizado em 2003 por Greg Marcks, remete-nos para 5 histórias distintas, as quais por um daqueles "acasos" da vida se vão cruzar e ligar exactamente ás 11:14 da noite, em Middletown, dando cabo da história "central" de Rachel Leigh Cook (Cheri). Um filme particularmente inteligente de um jovem argumentista e realizador, que consegue "agarrar" e nunca "largar" um argumento intrincado, com as 5 histórias a decorrer quer em paralelo quer individualmente. Com Henry Thomas (Jack), Barbara Hershey (Norma), Blake Heron (Aaron), Clark Gregg (Hannagan), Hilary Swank (Buzzy), Shawn Hatosy (Duffy), Stark Sands (Tim), Colin Hanks (Mark), Ben Foster (Eddie), Patrick Swayze (Frank) nos papeis principais.
No País do Acessório
O anúncio publicitário e os comentários do Provedor do Ouvinte e do Telespectador (muito provedor, e muito representante de tudo, há nesta pátria...) estão em anexo. A extrema-esquerda cheia de direitos e nenhum dever, arranjou mais um tema para a confusão. Se gosto do anúncio? Não, definitivamente. A questão é que toda a gente (desde que seja de extrema esquerda, pois se for de extrema direita tudo muda) se pode manifestar alegremente, sem qualquer tipo de respeito pelos outros, os quais podem ser prejudicados sem qualquer responsabilização. Existem n coisas muito mais graves (ver artigo "Uma Medida Errada, Perigosa e Irresponsável") que são aplaudidas pela turba ululante. A estupidificação é talvez o maior crime contra a democracia que existe, mas continua impune...
PARECER CONJUNTO DOS PROVEDORES DO TELESPECTADOR E DO OUVINTE DA RTP
Os provedores do Telespectador e do Ouvinte da Rádio e Televisão de Portugal, confrontados com a promoção da Antena 1, neste momento em difusão na RTP, particularmente com um spot que alude a efeitos de uma manifestação no trânsito, consideram seu dever tomar a seguinte posição:
1. O conteúdo desse spot veicula uma mensagem de tom antidemocrático, violadora de um direito constitucional;2. Dado o teor publicitário da campanha, os provedores olham com a maior reserva para a respectiva interpretação por um jornalista profissional;3. Em diferentes intervenções internas e externas, os dois provedores têm-se manifestado favoráveis ao aproveitamento das sinergias promocionais resultantes da fusão da RDP e da RTP;4. Da aludida promoção publicitária, contudo, os provedores não têm dúvidas de que resultam feridos princípios e direitos que devem ser superiormente respeitados, em especial por operadores com o estatuto de serviço público.
Nestes termos, os provedores do Telespectador e do Ouvinte são de parecer de que o spot publicitário em causa deve ser imediatamente retirado.
O Provedor do TelespectadorJosé Manuel Paquete de Oliveira
O Provedor do OuvinteAdelino Gomes
PARECER CONJUNTO DOS PROVEDORES DO TELESPECTADOR E DO OUVINTE DA RTP
Os provedores do Telespectador e do Ouvinte da Rádio e Televisão de Portugal, confrontados com a promoção da Antena 1, neste momento em difusão na RTP, particularmente com um spot que alude a efeitos de uma manifestação no trânsito, consideram seu dever tomar a seguinte posição:
1. O conteúdo desse spot veicula uma mensagem de tom antidemocrático, violadora de um direito constitucional;2. Dado o teor publicitário da campanha, os provedores olham com a maior reserva para a respectiva interpretação por um jornalista profissional;3. Em diferentes intervenções internas e externas, os dois provedores têm-se manifestado favoráveis ao aproveitamento das sinergias promocionais resultantes da fusão da RDP e da RTP;4. Da aludida promoção publicitária, contudo, os provedores não têm dúvidas de que resultam feridos princípios e direitos que devem ser superiormente respeitados, em especial por operadores com o estatuto de serviço público.
Nestes termos, os provedores do Telespectador e do Ouvinte são de parecer de que o spot publicitário em causa deve ser imediatamente retirado.
O Provedor do TelespectadorJosé Manuel Paquete de Oliveira
O Provedor do OuvinteAdelino Gomes
sexta-feira, 20 de março de 2009
Música - Comfortably Numb
Pink Floyd ao vivo, um original de The Wall
Hello,
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me
Is there anyone at home?
Come on now
I hear you're feeling down
Well, I can ease your pain
And get you on your feet again
Relax
I'll need some information first
Just the basic facts
Can you show me where it hurts
There is no pain, you are receding
A distant ship's smoke on the horizon
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying
When I was a child I had a fever
My hands felt just like two balloons
Now I've got that feeling once again
I can't explain, you would not understand
This is not how I am
I have become comfortably numb
I have become comfortably numb
O.K.
Just a little pin prick
There'll be no more...aaaaaaaah!
But you might feel a little sick
Can you stand up?
I do belive it's working, good
That'll keep you going, through the show
Come on it's time to go.
There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship's smoke on the horizon
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move, but I can't hear what you're saying
When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown
The dream is gone
And I have become
Comfortably numb.
Hello,
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me
Is there anyone at home?
Come on now
I hear you're feeling down
Well, I can ease your pain
And get you on your feet again
Relax
I'll need some information first
Just the basic facts
Can you show me where it hurts
There is no pain, you are receding
A distant ship's smoke on the horizon
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying
When I was a child I had a fever
My hands felt just like two balloons
Now I've got that feeling once again
I can't explain, you would not understand
This is not how I am
I have become comfortably numb
I have become comfortably numb
O.K.
Just a little pin prick
There'll be no more...aaaaaaaah!
But you might feel a little sick
Can you stand up?
I do belive it's working, good
That'll keep you going, through the show
Come on it's time to go.
There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship's smoke on the horizon
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move, but I can't hear what you're saying
When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown
The dream is gone
And I have become
Comfortably numb.
Etiquetas:
música,
Pink Floyd
Música - Hey You
Pink Floyd ao vivo, um original de The Wall
Hey you! Out there in the cold
Getting lonely, getting old, can you feel me?
Hey you! Standing in the aisles
With itchy feet and fading smiles, can you feel me?
Hey you! Don’t help them to bury the light
Don't give in without a fight.
Hey you! Out there on your own
Sitting naked by the phone would you touch me?
Hey you! With your ear against the wall
Waiting for someone to call out would you touch me?
Hey you! Would you help me to carry the stone?
Open your heart, I'm coming home
But it was only a fantasy
The wall was too high as you can see
No matter how he tried
He could not break free
And the worms ate into his brain.
Hey you! out there on the road
Doing what you're told, can you help me?
Hey you! out there beyond the wall
Breaking bottles in the hall, can you help me?
Hey you! don't tell me there's no hope at all
Together we stand, divided we fall.
Hey you! Out there in the cold
Getting lonely, getting old, can you feel me?
Hey you! Standing in the aisles
With itchy feet and fading smiles, can you feel me?
Hey you! Don’t help them to bury the light
Don't give in without a fight.
Hey you! Out there on your own
Sitting naked by the phone would you touch me?
Hey you! With your ear against the wall
Waiting for someone to call out would you touch me?
Hey you! Would you help me to carry the stone?
Open your heart, I'm coming home
But it was only a fantasy
The wall was too high as you can see
No matter how he tried
He could not break free
And the worms ate into his brain.
Hey you! out there on the road
Doing what you're told, can you help me?
Hey you! out there beyond the wall
Breaking bottles in the hall, can you help me?
Hey you! don't tell me there's no hope at all
Together we stand, divided we fall.
Etiquetas:
música,
Pink Floyd
Música - The Thin Ice
Pink Floyd ao vivo, um original de The Wall
Momma loves her baby
And daddy loves you too.
And the sea may look warm to you babe
And the sky may look blue
But ooooh Baby
Ooooh baby blue
Oooooh babe.
If you should go skating
On the thin ice of modern life
Dragging behind you the silent reproach
Of a million tear-stained eyes
Don't be surprised when a crack in the ice
Appears under your feet.
You slip out of your depth and out of your mind
With your fear flowing out behind you
As you claw the thin ice
Momma loves her baby
And daddy loves you too.
And the sea may look warm to you babe
And the sky may look blue
But ooooh Baby
Ooooh baby blue
Oooooh babe.
If you should go skating
On the thin ice of modern life
Dragging behind you the silent reproach
Of a million tear-stained eyes
Don't be surprised when a crack in the ice
Appears under your feet.
You slip out of your depth and out of your mind
With your fear flowing out behind you
As you claw the thin ice
Etiquetas:
música,
Pink Floyd
Uma Medida Errada, Perigosa e Irresponsável
A decisão do governo em subsidiar em 50% o valor da prestação dos empréstimos para aquisição de habitação própria, aplicável a casais em que um dos conjuges esteja desempregado há mais de três meses, é errada, perigosa e irresponsável: 1. Começa no seu carácter discriminatório: Então e os desempregados não casados ?, e quem tem casa alugada ?. São Portugueses de segunda ?. 2. Custos a pagar pelos do costume: O governo não sabe o número de pessoas abrangidas, não sabe quanto custa, limita-se a estimar. Se bem conheço as estimativas governamentais, tenho mais hipóteses de acertar no Euromilhões, do que o governo de acertar. 3. Subsídio de desemprego: Serve para quê ?. Qual é a justificação (social e económica) para alguns portugueses receberem 1 ordenado + um subsidio de desemprego + 50% do seu empréstimo bancário ?. 4. Esta medida tem como horizonte temporal 2 anos, e depois (não se sabe nem quando, nem como) o dinheiro terá de ser reembolsado. O governo garante emprego a essas pessoas daqui a dois anos? O governo garante um melhor clima económico ?. 5. A única coisa que se pretende é adiar no curto prazo um problema real, ou seja não se resolve nada, antes pelo contrário agrava-se o problema, dando ás familias a falsa ilusão de um aumento do seu rendimento disponível. 6. Tentar pagar dívidas contraindo novas dívidas é errado enquanto decisão individual, ser o governo a fomentar esta situação é de uma irresponsabilidade inqualificável. 7. A esquerda e a extrema esquerda estão excitadissimas com esta medida, vá-se lá saber porquê. Quem tem dito "cobras e lagartos" sobre o apoio governamental á banca, não consegue desta vez ver o óbvio?.
Pequena Politica
Mário Soares já foi elogiado neste blog, mas ontem esteve particularmente infeliz: "A Europa e o Partido Popular Europeu (PPE) "não vão muito longe" se têm Durão Barroso como "expoente" para uma recandidatura à presidência da Comissão Europeia". Pode-se elogiar a franqueza, mas Soares excedeu-se. Barroso é um dos seus "ódios de estimação", só que Soares arrisca-se (Deus lhe dê vida e saúde) a duas coisas: Continuar a ter Barroso como Presidente da Comissão Europeia, e em 2016 ter de lhe chamar "Sr Presidente da República"...
Justiça
Ontem (antes do prazo previsto), Josef Fritzl foi condenado a prisão perpétua, e não vai recorrer. Em Portugal nenhuma destas coisas seria possível, quanto mais as três...
quinta-feira, 19 de março de 2009
Dia Do Pai
Tudo começou em 1909, quando Sonora Louise Smart Dodd, de Spokane, Washinton, teve a ideia de escolher um dia especial para homenagear os pais, depois de ouvir um sermão no Dia da Mãe. Sonora Dodd queria homenagear o seu pai, William Jackson Smart, um veterano da Guerra Civil. Depois da morte da sua mulher, em 1898, o Sr. Smart passou a cuidar sozinho dos seis filhos do casal numa quinta no leste de Washington.Já adulta, Sonora Dodd compreendeu a força e a generosidade demonstradas pelo seu pai ao criar os filhos sozinho. Com o apoio da Associação Ministerial de Spokane e da Associação de Jovens Cristãos, redigiu uma petição em que recomendava a aceitação de um Dia Internacional do Pai. Graças aos esforços da Sra. Dodd, o primeiro Dia do Pai foi celebrado a 19 de Junho de 1910, em Spokane. Aproximadamente ao mesmo tempo, em vários locais por toda a América começava a comemorar-se um “Dia do Pai” e em 1924 o Presidente Calvin Coolidge apoiou publicamente a ideia de um Dia do Pai a nível nacional.Finalmente, em 1966, o Presidente Lyndon Johnson assinou uma proclamação presidencial, em que decretava o terceiro Domingo de Junho como o Dia do Pai. Em 1972, o Presidente Richard Nixon introduziu o Dia do Pai na lei. A partir desta data, passou a homenagear-se não só o pai, mas todos os homens que representam a figura paterna, como o avô, o padrasto ou o tio. Dia do Pai no Mundo: Em Portugal (assim como na Itália) o dia escolhido para homenagear os Pais é o dia 19 de Março que é também o Dia de S. José. Na África do Sul, Brasil e Austrália, festeja-se o Dia do Pai no segundo Domingo de Setembro, mas não é nada tradicional .Na Alemanha não existe um dia oficial dos Pais, esse dia é celebrado na mesma data que Jesus Cristo ressuscitou; os festejos compreendem acções como fazer piqueniques e passear com os filhos. Na Argentina é festejado no terceiro Domingo de Setembro, neste dia as famílias juntam-se e praticam várias actividades de lazer.No Canadá é festejado no dia 17 de Junho, é uma data mais voltada para o consumismo, não havendo preocupação em juntar as famílias. Na Grécia é uma comemoração muito recente e surgiu por existir o Dia da Mãe, e é comemorado no dia 21 de Junho.Na Rússia não existe a denominação Dia do Pai, comemoram o seu dia no dia 23 de Fevereiro e chamam-lhe “o Dia defensor da Pátria”.
quarta-feira, 18 de março de 2009
Resign Or Commit Suicide
A sugestão é do Senador Charles Grassley. 62 executivos e 11 ex-executivos da AIG receberam prémios no valor de 165 milhões de Dolares, depois de quase terem levado a empresa à falência. Já foi pedida a cabeça do Secretário do Tesouro Tim Geithner, e Barack Obama já teve que intervir, naquele que é o primeiro grande escândalo da sua Administração.
Provedor de Justiça
Se não serve para nada extinga-se o cargo. Não se entende é que o lugar esteja vago desde Junho de 2008 quando Nascimento Rodrigues cessou funções. Será que PS e PSD não conseguem arranjar um nome consensual (seja qual for a sua "cor" ?)
Música - Honey You´re Too Much
Legendary Tiger Man (ou Paulo Furtado, se preferirem...), album Masquerade de 2006
Filme - Pecados Intimos
Sarah (Kate Winslet), o marido Richard (Gregg Edelman) e a filha Lucy (Sadie Goldstein); Brad (Patrick Wilson), a esposa Kathy (Jennifer Connolly) e o filho Aaron (Ty Simpkins); 2 familias de classe média alta como tantas outras, que se cruzam nas ruas, no parque, na piscina. Um homem, Ronnie (Jackie Earle Haley) que cumpriu uma pena por exibicionismo e a sua mãe May (Phyllis Somerville) e outros personagens. Realizado em 2006 por Todd Field é brilhante. Através de um narrador (Will Lyman), vamos a pouco e pouco "descascando" todas as tensões e perversões contidas neste filme, onde muito se esconde "nos armários" e onde a normalidade aparente é constantemente questionada. Uma critica brutal á "sociedade de fachada", aos falsos moralismos e ao politicamente correcto, filmado á beira da perfeição. A partir de um livro de Tom Perrota (Little Children de 2004 - pena que o titulo original não tenha prevalecido em Português), o escritor e o realizador escreveram o argumento (nomeado ao respectivo Oscar). Nomeações igualmente para Winslet (Actriz Principal) e Haley (Actor Secundário).
Uma Das Maiores Aberrações...
Do politicamente correcto é tratar de forma igual aquilo que é manifestamente diferente...
Justiça em Portugal Século XXI - II
Josef Fritzl arrisca-se a prisão perpétua na "incivilizada" Austria, Bernard Madoff a 150 anos na pátria de Obama. Cá as penas (para quem é condenado...) são ridiculas (25 anos o máximo???) e como se sabe não são para cumprir na integra.
terça-feira, 17 de março de 2009
Grite Dra, Grite
Manuela Ferreira Leite desabafou "que quase ninguém nos ouve". Pode não ser muito bonito uma senhora gritar, mas é o que os "cavalheiros" fazem...
Música - Sad Waters
Ao vivo em 2003, Nick Cave com os Bad Seeds
Down the road I look and there runs Mary
Hair of gold and lips like cherries
We go down to the river where the willows weep
Take a naked root for a lovers seat
That rose out of the bitten soil
But sound to the ground by creeping ivy coils
O Mary you have seduced my soul
And I don't know right from wrong
Forever a hostage of your child's world
And then I ran my tin-cup heart along
The prison of her ribs
And with a toss of her curls
That little girl goes wading in
Rollin her dress up past her knee
Turning these waters into wine
Then she platted all the willow vines
Mary in the shallows laughing
Over where the carp dart
Spooked by the new shadows that she cast
Across these sad waters and across my heart
Down the road I look and there runs Mary
Hair of gold and lips like cherries
We go down to the river where the willows weep
Take a naked root for a lovers seat
That rose out of the bitten soil
But sound to the ground by creeping ivy coils
O Mary you have seduced my soul
And I don't know right from wrong
Forever a hostage of your child's world
And then I ran my tin-cup heart along
The prison of her ribs
And with a toss of her curls
That little girl goes wading in
Rollin her dress up past her knee
Turning these waters into wine
Then she platted all the willow vines
Mary in the shallows laughing
Over where the carp dart
Spooked by the new shadows that she cast
Across these sad waters and across my heart
Música - The Carny
Nick Cave com os Bad Seeds ao vivo
And no-one saw the Carny go
And the weeks flew by
Until they moved on the show
Leaving his caravan behind
It was parked out on the south east ridge
And as the company crossed the bridge
With the first rain filling the bone-dry river bed
It shone, just so, upon the edge
away, away we're sad to say
Dog-boy, Atlas, Man-drake, the geeks, the hired hands
There was not one among them that did not cast an eye behind
In the hope that the Carny would return to his own kind
The Carny left behind a horse so skin and bone that he'd named Sorrow
And it was a shallow unmarked grave
That that old nag was laid
In the then parched meadow
And it was the dwarves that were given the task of digging the ditch
And laying the nag's carcass in the ground
while boss Bellini, waved his smoking pistol 'round
Saying ''The nag was dead meat''
''We can't afford to carry dead weight''
The whole company standing about
Not making a sound
And turning to the dwarves on the enclosured gate
the boss says ''bury this lump of crow bait''
And the rain came hammering down
Everybody running for their wagons
Tying all the canvas flaps down
The mangy cats growling in their cages
The bird-girl flapping and squawkening around
The whole valley reeking of wet beast
Wet beast and rotten, sodden hay
Freak and brute creation all packed up and on their way
The three dwarves peering through their wagon's hind
Moses says to Noah ''We shoulda dugga deepa one''
Their grissom faces like dying moons
Still dirty from the digging done
And Charlie the Atlas to the three said
"I guess the Carny ain't gonna show"
And they were silent for a spell
wishing they'd done a better job at burrying Sorrow
And the company'd passed from the valley into higher ground
The rain beat on the ridge and on the meadow and on the mound
Until nothing was left, nothing left at all
Except the body of Sorrow that rose in time
To float upon the surface of the eaten soil
And a murder of crows did circle 'round
First one, then the others flapping blackly down
And the Carny's van still sat upon the edge
Tilting slowly as the firm ground turned to sludge
And the rain it hammered down
And the rain it hammered down
And the rain it hammered down
And the rain it hammered down
And no-one saw the Carny go
And no-one saw the Carny go
And no-one saw the Carny go
I say its funny how things go
And no-one saw the Carny go
And the weeks flew by
Until they moved on the show
Leaving his caravan behind
It was parked out on the south east ridge
And as the company crossed the bridge
With the first rain filling the bone-dry river bed
It shone, just so, upon the edge
away, away we're sad to say
Dog-boy, Atlas, Man-drake, the geeks, the hired hands
There was not one among them that did not cast an eye behind
In the hope that the Carny would return to his own kind
The Carny left behind a horse so skin and bone that he'd named Sorrow
And it was a shallow unmarked grave
That that old nag was laid
In the then parched meadow
And it was the dwarves that were given the task of digging the ditch
And laying the nag's carcass in the ground
while boss Bellini, waved his smoking pistol 'round
Saying ''The nag was dead meat''
''We can't afford to carry dead weight''
The whole company standing about
Not making a sound
And turning to the dwarves on the enclosured gate
the boss says ''bury this lump of crow bait''
And the rain came hammering down
Everybody running for their wagons
Tying all the canvas flaps down
The mangy cats growling in their cages
The bird-girl flapping and squawkening around
The whole valley reeking of wet beast
Wet beast and rotten, sodden hay
Freak and brute creation all packed up and on their way
The three dwarves peering through their wagon's hind
Moses says to Noah ''We shoulda dugga deepa one''
Their grissom faces like dying moons
Still dirty from the digging done
And Charlie the Atlas to the three said
"I guess the Carny ain't gonna show"
And they were silent for a spell
wishing they'd done a better job at burrying Sorrow
And the company'd passed from the valley into higher ground
The rain beat on the ridge and on the meadow and on the mound
Until nothing was left, nothing left at all
Except the body of Sorrow that rose in time
To float upon the surface of the eaten soil
And a murder of crows did circle 'round
First one, then the others flapping blackly down
And the Carny's van still sat upon the edge
Tilting slowly as the firm ground turned to sludge
And the rain it hammered down
And the rain it hammered down
And the rain it hammered down
And the rain it hammered down
And no-one saw the Carny go
And no-one saw the Carny go
And no-one saw the Carny go
I say its funny how things go
Disco - Your Funeral...My Trial.
Justiça em Portugal Século XXI
Bernard Madoff, levou 3 meses a ser preso (após rebentar o escândalo) e o julgamento está marcado para 16 Junho. Josef Fritzl, o homem que manteve a filha cativa durante 24 anos e da qual teve 7 filhos, foi preso em Abril de 2007 e a sentença final deverá ser proferida Sábado. Cá o Processo Casa Pia arrasta-se desde 2002, Freeport desde 2004, Apito Dourado desde 2001, etc, etc.
segunda-feira, 16 de março de 2009
Música - Paint It Black
Rolling Stones um original de Aftermath de 1966, aqui em duas versões ao vivo: Uma de 1967 e outra de 2006.
Etiquetas:
música,
Rolling Stones
Música - Fool To Cry
Rolling Stones, um original de Black and Blue de 1976
Etiquetas:
música,
Rolling Stones
domingo, 15 de março de 2009
Ephemera
Chama-se Ephemera, e goste-se ou não, de José Pacheco Pereira, recomendo ir vendo este blog que tem como objectivo (nas palavras do próprio) "divulgar materiais da biblioteca e arquivo pessoais de José Pacheco Pereira, em particular dos diferentes espólios, doações, ofertas e aquisições que deles fazem parte. Na medida do possível, do tempo e das circunstâncias, todos estes materiais estão acessíveis aos investigadores que deles necessitem para o seu estudo e trabalho, nos condicionalismos normais de uma biblioteca e arquivos privados. Dada a dimensão e qualidade de alguns dos materiais, em particular as espécies únicas e as colecções especializadas inexistentes em bibliotecas e arquivos públicos, o meu objectivo, a prazo, é tornar disponível a todos este acervo".
Música - My Friends
Red Hot Chilli Peppers, versão ao vivo para um original de One Hot Minute de 1995
Livro - A Voz Subterrânea
Escrito em 1864 por Fiódor Dostoiévski, divide-se em 2 partes: A primeira (O Subterrâneo) é um enorme monólogo de um homem de 40 anos que se define como "sendo mau". A segunda parte (A Propósito da Neve Derretida) encontra o nosso narrador com 24 anos, é um novo monólogo, entrecortado aqui e ali com os vários personagens que o rodeiam, e que nos permitem visualizar a sua mesquinhez, a sua crueldade e o desprezo que sente por todos, não respeitando ninguém (incluindo a si próprio). Livro "brutal" de um dos nomes cimeiros da literatura mundial.
sábado, 14 de março de 2009
Música - Magnificent
U2
Magnificent
Magnificent
I was born
I was born to be with you
In this space and time
After that and ever after I haven't had a clue
Only to break rhyme
This foolishness can leave a heart black and blue
Only love, only love can leave such a mark
But only love, only love can heal such a scar
I was born
I was born to sing for you
I didn’t have a choice but to lift you up
And sing whatever song you wanted me to
I give you back my voice
From the womb my first cry, it was a joyful noise…
Only love, only love can leave such a mark
But only love, only love can heal such a scar
Justified till we die, you and I will magnify
The Magnificent
Magnificent
Only love, only love can leave such a mark
But only love, only love unites our hearts
Justified till we die, you and I will magnify
The Magnificent
Magnificent
Magnificent
Magnificent
Magnificent
I was born
I was born to be with you
In this space and time
After that and ever after I haven't had a clue
Only to break rhyme
This foolishness can leave a heart black and blue
Only love, only love can leave such a mark
But only love, only love can heal such a scar
I was born
I was born to sing for you
I didn’t have a choice but to lift you up
And sing whatever song you wanted me to
I give you back my voice
From the womb my first cry, it was a joyful noise…
Only love, only love can leave such a mark
But only love, only love can heal such a scar
Justified till we die, you and I will magnify
The Magnificent
Magnificent
Only love, only love can leave such a mark
But only love, only love unites our hearts
Justified till we die, you and I will magnify
The Magnificent
Magnificent
Magnificent
Filme - Por Um Fio
Quase 2 horas de enorme cinema pela mão de Martin Scorsese. Realizado em 1999, conta-nos a história de Frank (Nicholas Cage) um paramédico em profunda crise física e mental, refugiado no alcool. Um grande conjunto de personagens são aqui retratados: Mary Burke - (Patricia Arquette ), Larry - (John Goodman) ,Marcus - Ving Rhames, Noel - (Marc Anthony), entre outros) através de uma utilização da câmara, da cor, dos espaços físicos, humanos, narrativos absolutamente invulgar. Filme profundamente complexo é uma filmagem de "estados de alma" e de uma cidade: Nova Iorque.
Etiquetas:
Cinema,
Martin Scorsese
Internet 20 Anos
A Internet completou ontem vinte anos. Em Março de 1989, um cientista do CERN, Tim Berners-Lee publicou um estudo sobre a melhor forma de fazer a troca de documentos e pesquisas entre cientistas de todo o mundo. Antes de 1989 a rede de transmissão era usada exclusivamente pelos militares americanos e algumas instituições especializadas. O cientista propôs ao supervisor no CERN resolver as dificuldades relativas à gestão de grandes volumes de informação, desenhando "um sistema de informação interligada", onde os documentos seriam acedidos por um "browser", mais tarde denominado de World Wide Web.
sexta-feira, 13 de março de 2009
Música - Mother
Pink Floyd, um original de The Wall, aqui ao vivo
Etiquetas:
música,
Pessoal,
Pink Floyd
Poema - Para Sempre
Porque Deus permite
que as mães vão-se embora?
Mãe não tem limite,
é tempo sem hora,
luz que não apaga
quando sopra o vento
e chuva desaba,veludo escondido
na pele enrugada,
água pura, ar puro,
puro pensamento.
Morrer acontece
com o que é breve e passa
sem deixar vestígio.
Mãe, na sua graça,é eternidade.
.
Porque Deus se lembra
- mistério profundo -
de tirá-la um dia?
Fosse eu rei do Mundo,
baixava uma lei:
Mãe, não morre nunca,
mãe ficará sempre
junto do seu filho
e ele, velho embora,
será pequenino
feito grão de milho.
.
Carlos Drummond de Andrade
que as mães vão-se embora?
Mãe não tem limite,
é tempo sem hora,
luz que não apaga
quando sopra o vento
e chuva desaba,veludo escondido
na pele enrugada,
água pura, ar puro,
puro pensamento.
Morrer acontece
com o que é breve e passa
sem deixar vestígio.
Mãe, na sua graça,é eternidade.
.
Porque Deus se lembra
- mistério profundo -
de tirá-la um dia?
Fosse eu rei do Mundo,
baixava uma lei:
Mãe, não morre nunca,
mãe ficará sempre
junto do seu filho
e ele, velho embora,
será pequenino
feito grão de milho.
.
Carlos Drummond de Andrade
quinta-feira, 12 de março de 2009
Já Começou a Habitual Estupidez...
Ainda ninguém percebeu se o massacre de ontem num liceu alemão provocou 15, 16 ou 17 mortos, como igualmente ainda ninguém percebeu se o adolescente se suicidou, foi morto pela polícia, ou escapou (já li todas estas versões), mas já se começa a apontar o culpado: Um jogo de vídeo...Quanto a Tim Kretschmer (o assassino) presume-se que seja inocente...
Música - Time Is On My Side
Rolling Stones ao vivo em 1981, um original de Jerry Ragovoy (escrito sob o pseudónimo de Norman Meade).
Etiquetas:
música,
Rolling Stones
Disco - No. 2
2º album dos Rolling Stones foi lançado em 1965 e não difere muito na sua matriz, face ao album de estreia: Originais em minoria e essencialmente covers de temas de artistas de R&B. No entanto há um "crescimento" da banda face ao seu anterior trabalho.
Etiquetas:
Disco,
Rolling Stones
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