Poemas no cinema

David, em The Reader (Stephen Daldry, 2009), Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes) lê para o gravador «The Odyssey by Homer». Escutamos os primeiros versos na cela de Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet):

Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.

Mas há mais...

Como elogio fúnebre, gosto muito do «Funeral Blues» de W. H. Auden, poema lido em Quatro Casamentos e Um Funeral (Mike Newell, 1994). Mas este já está na tua lista. Lembrei-me então de outra morte na tela. em África Minha (Sydney Pollack, 1985). e daquela cena que nos faz chorar até às lágrimas (esta expressão é estranha...). Karen Blixen (Meryl Streep) lê de pé, sobre a sepultura de Finch Hatton (Robert Redford), um poema. Este:

XIX - To An Athlete Dying Young

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before the echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

O livro que Karen abre é A Shropshire Lad (1896) do poeta inglês Alfred Edward Housman. A obra é composta por 63 poemas. Finch Hatton tinha a alma do XIX.