Forbidden Words Quotes

“We’ve worn our words to death,
when now I say: my love,
nothing happens, absolutely nothing.
And yet, before the words were spent,
I’m certain
that everything trembled
at the mere murmur of your name
in the silence of my heart.

Now we have nothing to give.
There is nothing within you
that asks me for water.
The past is useless as a rag.
And I’ve told you already: the words are spent.

Good-bye.”
― Eugénio de Andrade, Forbidden Words: Selected Poetry

“It's urgent-love.
It's urgent- a boat upon the sea.

It's urgent to destroy certain words,
hate, solitude, and cruelty,
some mornings,
many swords.

It's urgent to invent a joyfulness,
multiply kisses and cornfields,
discover roses and rivers
and glistening mornings- it's urgent.

Silence and an impure light fall upon our shoulders till they ache.
It's urgent- love, it's urgent
to endure.”
― Eugénio de Andrade, Forbidden Words: Selected Poetry

“Receding Surf

The cool violence of wine;
the furrows of receding surf; the morning whistle
of the shepherd, more propitious for art
than all the music of the spheres;
this pride at having in one’s heart the spilled milk of the stars.

”
― Eugénio de Andrade, Forbidden Words: Selected Poetry

“I Do Not Sing Because I Dream

I do not sing because I dream.
I simply sing because you’re real.
I sing your ripened gaze,
your purest smile,
your animal grace.

I sing because I am a man.
And if I didn’t sing I’d be
just a brute, bursting with health, blind
drunk and dizzy with delight
there in your vineyard without wine.

I sing because love wishes it.
Because hay ripens
in your arms, glistening wet.
Because my body tightens
facing them, bare and bathed in sweat.

”
― Eugénio de Andrade, Forbidden Words: Selected Poetry