Houses, yes, let’s talk about houses, about
the wise use of so solid and silent
a power, hailing from ancient times.
Here are the architects, the ones who are going to die,
smiling with sweet irony in the depths
of a rare secret that restores them to clay.
The ones with soft irrepressible hands.
— Across the months, dreaming of the last rains,
the houses discover their innocent knack for enduring against
the subtle mouth crowned by the chaos of words.

Say we discover blackberries, the hidden current
of taste, enthusiasm for the world.
Say we discover bodies of self-protected, contained people, and the stunning
silence of fountains —
thoughts in the stones of something celestial
like exemplary fire.
Say we sleep in the houses, and see the muses
gently leaning over us like gloomy flowers,
tall and slender, and we remember
and are melancholy
and watch the doors close on the demise of the lofty days.

Yes, these are the houses. And if we ourselves are going to die,
we wonder a little, and a lot, at those architects
who didn’t see the endless torrents
of roses, or the unceasing waters,
or a sign of eternity sown in quick-beating
hearts.
— What did those architects of these houses do, they who roamed
through the months’ many directions,
saying one house goes here, another there, another there,
so as to make for some order, a duration,
a beauty against the divine force?

Someone brought horses, coming down the mountain paths.
Someone came from the sea.
Someone came from abroad, all covered with dust.
Someone read books, poems, prophecies, commandments,
inspirations.
— These houses will be destroyed.
Like a sunflower, designed to get drunk and insisting
on its solar wedding, so too
each house will waste away, bereft of a fire,
bowing its lagging head toward the mysterious rivers
of the earth
where the architects themselves will crumble by their own
multiple hands, their faces burning in the swift
illuminations.

Let’s talk about houses. It’s summer, autumn,
teeming names among the slanting landscapes.
The builders of the soul brought
salt, in themselves they carried
a restorative awe before the ever-present sight
of animals and stars,
they imagined purity with men and women
side by side, smiling enigmatically,
touching each other —
tender, diffident, inclined to give,
slow to burn.

For a fleeting moment they would meet each spring
with the first and original jonquil,
remaining cool the rest of the year, so brief were the masters
of inspiration.
— And the houses rose up
over the waters all across the sky.
But houses, O architects, enchanted exchanges
of sweet and obsessive flesh — none of this went
into the song that needed to be written.

— And mirrors are the impurest invention of all.

Let’s talk of houses, of death. Houses are roses
to be sniffed very early, or at night, when hope
abandons us forever.
Houses are long-lived, nocturnal, celestial
rivers that slowly shimmer
toward a cold bay — which might not exist,
like a secret eternity.

Yes, let’s talk of houses, as if talking of our souls,
in the midst of a fire,
next to the example of the wheat fields,
learning the patience that sees them grow tall
and die with a trace, a hint,
of beauty.

Herberto Helder, A Colher na Boca. Lisboa, Ática, 1961. p. 13-15.
- Ou o Poema Contínuo. Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim, 2004. p. 9-12.

Translated by Richard Zenith

The Lisbon Architecture Triennale — the most significant architectural event in the Iberian Peninsula — is now in preparation for its second edition. Based on the high quality and development of Portuguese architecture, the Triennale aims to establish itself as an outstanding forum for discussing issues of contemporary architecture, starting from the principle that architectural practice is a fundamental expression of the creation of place, the construction of an integrating sense of citizenship, and cultural affirmation.

The theme of the 2010 Lisbon Architecture Triennale is Let’s Talk About Houses. Taken from Herberto Helder’s 1965 poem, the challenge of talking about the house in its countless forms, in terms of its vernacularity and poetics, and in the sense of inhabiting a space, will be tackled in various ways in three exhibitions, in the accompanying catalogues, and in the international conference that will bring some of the most important figures in architecture and contemporary thought to Lisbon.

The house is an archetype of architecture and, at the same time, the version of it that is most present in the collective imagination. On the other hand, the house and the dwelling are the domains in which architecture comes into closest contact with society as a whole, and in which architecture is also openly and availably subjected to public scrutiny.

In this respect, the house is the link between architecture and the human in its most basic and individual manifestation – people. But it also constitutes a symbolic field of connection between the dimension of utility and the poetic dimension of dwelling, between the anthropological dimension and the pressing political question of survival.

The 2010 Triennale´s focus on the house and dwelling aims to situate itself, in a plural manner, on architecture’s descent to the level of the street by seeking to tackle architectural questions that are closest to civic experience, public debate, and the effective reality of the social experience of architecture.