"The Lost Oasis" by Leo Dorfman (in English)

art by Angelo Torres - The Twilight Zone #14 – Gold Key,  February 1966.

“Cisnes Brancos” by Alphonsus de Guimaraens (in Portuguese)

Ó cisnes brancos, cisnes brancos,

Porque viestes, se era tão tarde?

O sol não beija mais os flancos

Da Montanha onde mora a tarde.

Ó cisnes brancos, dolorida

Minh’alma sente dores novas.

Cheguei à terra prometida:

É um deserto cheio de covas.

Voai para outras risonhas plagas,

Cisnes brancos! Sede felizes...

Deixai-me só com as minhas chagas,

E só com as minhas cicatrizes.

Venham as aves agoireiras,

De risada que esfria os ossos...

Minh’alma, cheia de caveiras,

Está branca de padre-nossos.

Queimando a carne como brasas,

Venham as tentações daninhas,

Que eu lhes porei, bem sob asas,

A alma cheia de ladainhas.

Ó cisnes brancos, cisnes brancos,

Doce afago da alva plumagem!

Minh’alma morre aos solavancos

Nesta medonha carruagem.

Quando chegaste, os violoncelos

Que andam no ar cantaram no hinos.

Estrelaram-se todos os castelos,

E até nas nuvens repicaram sinos.

Foram-se as brancas horas sem rumo,

Tanto sonhadas! Ainda, ainda

Hoje os meus pobres versos perfumo

Com os beijos santos da tua vinda.

Quando te foste, estalaram cordas

Nos violoncelos e nas harpas...

E anjos disseram: - Não mais acordas,

Lírio nascido nas escarpas!

Sinos dobraram no céu e escuto

Dobres eternos na minha ermida.

E os pobres versos ainda hoje enluto

Com os beijos santos da despedida.

“Lua Adversa” by Cecília Meireles (in Portuguese)

Tenho fases, como a lua.

Fases de andar escondida,

fases de vir para a rua...

Perdição da minha vida!

Perdição da vida minha!

Tenho fases de ser tua,

tenho outras de ser sozinha.

Fases que vão e vêm,

no secreto calendário

que um astrólogo arbitrário

inventou para meu uso.

E roda a melancolia

seu interminável fuso!

Não me encontro com ninguém

(tenho fases como a lua...)

No dia de alguém ser meu

não é dia de eu ser sua...

E, quando chega esse dia,

o outro desapareceu...

"Ballad of Reading Gaol" - Version I, Part V by Oscar Wilde (in English)

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.

“12 Angry Men” by Reginald Rose (in English)

Juror #2: It's hard to put into words. I just think he's guilty. I thought it was obvious from the word, 'Go'. Nobody proved otherwise.

Juror #8: Nobody has to prove otherwise. The burden of proof is on the prosecution. The defendant doesn't even have to open his mouth. That's in the Constitution.

"The Lost Valley" by an Unknown Writer (in English)

Art by Fred Ray - Star Spangled Comics vol.1 #83 - DC Comics, August 1948.

“Rejected” by Lord Alfred Douglas (in English)

Alas ! I have lost my God,

My beautiful God Apollo.

Wherever his footsteps trod

My feet were wont to follow.

But Oh ! it fell out one day

My soul was so heavy with weeping,

That I laid me down by the way ;

And he left me while I was sleeping.

And my soul awoke in the night,

And I bowed my ear for his fluting,

And I heard but the breath of the flight

Of wings and the night-birds hooting.

And night drank all her cup,

And I went to the shrine in the hollow,

And the voice of my cry went up :

' Apollo ! Apollo ! Apollo ! '

But he never came to the gate,

And the sun was hid in a mist,

And there came one walking late,

And I knew it was Christ,

He took my soul and bound it

With cords of iron wire,

Seven times round He wound it

With the cords of my desire.

The cords of my desire,

While my desire slept, ,

Were seven bands of wire

To bind my soul that wept.

And He hid my soul at last

In a place of stones and (ears,

Where the hours like days went past

And the days went by like years.

And after many days

That which had slept awoke,

And desire burnt in a blaze,

And my soul went up in the smoke.

And we crept away from the place

And would not look behind,

And the angel that hides his face

Was crouched on the neck of the wind.

And I went to the shrine in the hollow

Where the lutes and the flutes were playing,

And cried : ' I am come, Apollo,

Back to thy shrine, from my straying.'

But he would have none of my soul

That was stained with blood and with tears,

That had lain in the earth like a mole,

In the place of great stones and fears.

And now I am lost in the mist

Of the things that can never be,

For I will have none of Christ

And Apollo will none of me.