The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Wallace Stevens

(October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was a major American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as a lawyer for the Hartford insurance company in Connecticut.

His best-known poems include "Anecdote of the Jar", "Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock", "The Emperor of Ice-Cream", "The Idea of Order at Key West", "Sunday Morning", "The Snow Man", and "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird", all of which appear in his Collected Poems for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1955.

O vento move-se

Assim se move o vento :

como os pensamentos de um velho humano

que ainda pensa com fúria

e avidez.

Assim se move o vento :

como um humano sem ilusões

que ainda sente coisas irracionais dentro dela.

Assim se move o vento :

como humanos que orgulhosos se aproximam,

como humanos que em fúria se aproximam.

Assim se move o vento :

pesado e pesado, como um humano

que não se importa.

Wallace Stevens in. "Antologia " relógio d'água

O HOMEM DA NEVE

É preciso uma mente de inverno
Para olhar a geada e os ramos
Dos pinheiros cobertos pela nevada

E há muito tempo fazer frio
Para observar os zimbros arrepiados de gelo,
Os abetos ásperos no brilho distante

Do sol de janeiro; e não pensar
Em qualquer miséria no som do vento,
No som de umas poucas folhas

Que é o som da terra
Cheia do mesmo vento
Que sopra no mesmo lugar vazio

Para alguém que escuta, escuta na neve,
E, ausente, observa
Nada que não está lá e o nada que é.


Wallace Stevens
Tradução de Paulo Venâncio Filho

The snow man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Wallace Stevens

Valley Candle

My candle burned alone in an immense valley.
Beams of the huge night converged upon it,
Until the wind blew.
The beams of the huge night
Converged upon its image,
Until the wind blew.


Wallace Stevens
(1879 - 1955 / Pennsylvania / United States)