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A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe

Page 6

by Fernando Pessoa


  XXVI

  Sometimes, on days of perfect and exact light,

  When things are as real as they can possibly be,

  I slowly ask myself

  Why I even bother to attribute

  Beauty to things.

  Does a flower really have beauty?

  Does a fruit really have beauty?

  No: they have only color and form

  And existence.

  Beauty is the name of something that doesn’t exist

  But that I give to things in exchange for the pleasure they

  give me.

  It means nothing.

  So why do I say about things: they’re beautiful?

  Yes, even I, who live only off living,

  Am unwittingly visited by the lies of men

  Concerning things,

  Concerning things that simply exist.

  How hard to be just what we are and see nothing but the visible!

  11 MARCH 1914

  XXVII

  Only Nature is divine, and she is not divine . . .

  If I sometimes speak of her as a person

  It’s because I can only speak of her by using the language

  of men,

  Which imposes names on things

  And gives them personality.

  But things have no name or personality:

  They just are, and the sky is vast, the earth wide,

  And our heart the size of a closed fist . . .

  Blessed am I for all I don’t know.

  That’s all I truly am . . .

  I enjoy it all as one who knows that the sun exists.

  XXVIII

  Today I read nearly two pages

  In the book of a mystic poet,

  And I laughed as if I’d cried a lot.

  Mystic poets are sick philosophers,

  And philosophers are lunatics.

  Because mystic poets say that flowers feel

  And that stones have souls

  And that rivers are filled with rapture in the moonlight.

  But flowers, if they felt, wouldn’t be flowers,

  They would be people;

  And if stones had souls, they would be living things, not

  stones;

  And if rivers were filled with rapture in the moonlight,

  Those rivers would be sick people.

  Only one who doesn’t know what flowers and stones and

  rivers are

  Can talk about their feelings.

  Those who talk about the soul of stones, of flowers and of

  rivers

  Are talking about themselves and their false notions.

  Thank God that stones are just stones,

  And rivers nothing but rivers,

  And flowers merely flowers.

  As for me, I write the prose of my verses

  And am satisfied,

  Because I know I understand Nature on the outside,

  And I don’t understand it on the inside,

  Because Nature has no inside.

  If it did, it wouldn’t be Nature.

  XXX

  If you want me to have a mysticism, then fine, I have one.

  I’m a mystic, but only with my body.

  My soul is simple and doesn’t think.

  My mysticism is not wanting to know.

  It’s living and not thinking about it.

  I don’t know what Nature is: I sing it.

  I live on top of a hill

  In a solitary, whitewashed house,

  And that is my definition.

  XXXI

  If sometimes I say that flowers smile

  And if I should say that rivers sing,

  It’s not because I think there are smiles in flowers

  And songs in the rivers’ flowing . . .

  It’s so I can help misguided men

  Feel the truly real existence of flowers and rivers.

  Since I write for them to read me, I sometimes stoop

  To the stupidity of their senses . . .

  It isn’t right, but I excuse myself,

  Because I’ve only taken on this odious role, an interpreter of

  Nature,

  Because there are men who don’t grasp its language,

  Which is no language at all.

  XXXIII

  Poor flowers in the flower beds of manicured gardens.

  They look like they’re afraid of the police . . .

  But they’re so true that they bloom in the same way

  And have the same ancient coloring

  They had in their wild state for the first gaze of the first

  man,

  Who was startled by the sight of them and touched them

  lightly

  So that he would see them with his fingers too.

  XXXIV

  I find it so natural not to think

  That I sometimes start laughing, all by myself,

  About I don’t know quite what, but it has to do

  With there being people who think . . .

  What does my wall think about my shadow?

  Sometimes I wonder about this until I realize

  I’m wondering about things . . .

  And then I feel annoyed and out of sorts with myself,

  As if I’d realized my foot was asleep . . .

  What does one thing think about another?

  Nothing thinks anything.

  Is the earth aware of the stones and plants it contains?

  If it were, it would be a person,

  And if it were a person, it would have a person’s nature, it

  wouldn’t be the earth.

  But what does all this matter to me?

  If I thought about these things,

  I would stop seeing the trees and plants

  And would stop seeing the Earth,

  Seeing nothing but my thoughts . . .

  I would grow sad and remain in the dark.

  The way I am, without thinking, I have the Earth and the Sky.

  XXXV

  The moonlight seen through the tall branches

  Is more, say all the poets,

  Than the moonlight seen through the tall branches.

  But for me, oblivious to what I think,

  The moonlight seen through the tall branches,

  Besides its being

  The moonlight seen through the tall branches,

  Is its not being more

  Than the moonlight seen through the tall branches.

  XXXVI

  And there are poets who are artists

  And they fashion their verses

  Like a carpenter his boards! . . .

  How sad not to know how to blossom!

  To have to place verse upon verse, as if building a wall,

  Making sure each one is right, and taking it away if it

  isn’t! . . .

  When the only true house is the whole Earth,

  Which varies and is always right and is always the same.

  I think about this not as one who thinks but as one who

  doesn’t,

  And I look at the flowers and smile . . .

  I don’t know if they understand me

  Or if I understand them,

  But I know the truth is in them and in me

  And in our common divinity

  Of letting go and living right here on the Earth

  And contentedly cuddling up in the Seasons

  And letting the wind gently sing us to sleep

  And having no dreams in our slumber.

  XLI

  On certain summer days, when the dusk is falling,

  Even if there’s no breeze, it seems

  For a moment that a light breeze is passing . . .

  But the trees remain still

  In all the leaves of their leaves.

  Our senses had an illusion—

  The illusion of what, in that moment, would please them . . .

  Ah, our senses, such sick observers and listeners!
<
br />   Were we as we should be,

  We wouldn’t need any illusions . . .

  It would be enough for us to feel with clarity and life,

  Without even noticing what the senses are for . . .

  But thank God there’s imperfection in the World,

  Since imperfection is a thing,

  And the existence of mistaken people is original,

  And the existence of sick people makes the world

  interesting.

  If there were no imperfection, there would be one less thing,

  And there should be many things

  So that we will have a lot to see and hear

  For as long as our eyes and ears remain open . . .

  7 MAY 1914

  XLIII

  Better the flight of the bird that passes and leaves no trace Than the passage of the animal, recorded in the ground. The bird passes and is forgotten, which is how it should be. The animal, no longer there and so of no further use, Uselessly shows it was there.

  Remembrance is a betrayal of Nature,

  Because yesterday’s Nature isn’t Nature.

  What was is nothing, and to remember is not to see.

  Pass by, bird, pass, and teach me to pass!

  7 MAY 1914

  XLV

  A row of trees in the distance, toward the slope . . .

  But what is a row of trees? There are just trees.

  “Row” and the plural “trees” are names, not things.

  Unhappy human beings, who put everything in order,

  Draw lines from thing to thing,

  Place labels with names on absolutely real trees,

  And plot parallels of latitude and longitude

  On the innocent earth itself, which is so much greener and full

  of flowers!

  7 MAY 1914

  XLVI

  In this way or that way,

  As it may happen or not happen,

  Sometimes succeeding in saying what I think

  And at other times saying it badly and with things mixed in,

  I keep writing my poems, inadvertently,

  As if writing were not something requiring action,

  As if writing were something that happens to me

  In the same way that the sun reaches me from outside.

  I try to say what I feel

  Without thinking about what I feel.

  I try to place words right next to my idea

  So that I won’t need a corridor

  Of thought leading to words.

  I don’t always manage to feel what I know I should feel.

  Only very slowly does my thought swim across the river,

  Weighed down as it is by the suit men forced it to wear.

  I try to shed what I’ve learned,

  I try to forget the way I was taught to remember,

  To scrape off the paint that was painted on my senses,

  To uncrate my true emotions,

  To step out of all my wrapping and be myself—not Alberto

  Caeiro

  But a human animal created by Nature.

  That’s how I write, wanting to feel Nature not even as a man

  But merely as someone who feels Nature.

  That’s how I write, sometimes well, sometimes badly,

  Sometimes saying just what I want to say, sometimes getting

  it wrong,

  Falling down one moment and getting up the next,

  But always continuing on my way like a stubborn blind

  man.

  Even so, I’m somebody.

  I’m the Discoverer of Nature.

  I’m the Argonaut of true sensations.

  I bring to the Universe a new Universe,

  Because I bring to the Universe its own self.

  This is what I feel and write,

  Perfectly aware and clearly seeing

  That it’s five o’clock in the morning

  And that the sun, although it still hasn’t raised its face

  Over the wall of the horizon,

  Is already showing the tips of its fingers

  Gripping the top of the wall

  Of the horizon sprinkled with low hills.

  10 MAY 1914

  XLVIII

  From the highest window of my house

  I wave farewell with a white handkerchief

  To my poems going out to humanity.

  And I’m neither happy nor sad.

  That is the fate of poems.

  I wrote them and must show them to everyone

  Because I cannot do otherwise,

  Even as the flower can’t hide its color,

  Nor the river hide its flowing,

  Nor the tree hide the fruit it bears.

  There they go, already far away, as if in the stagecoach,

  And I can’t help but feel regret

  Like a pain in my body.

  Who knows who might read them?

  Who knows into what hands they’ll fall?

  A flower, I was plucked by my fate to be seen.

  A tree, my fruit was picked to be eaten.

  A river, my water’s fate was to flow out of me.

  I submit and feel almost happy,

  Almost happy like a man tired of being sad.

  Go, go away from me!

  The tree passes and is scattered throughout Nature.

  The flower wilts and its dust lasts forever.

  The river flows into the sea and its water is forever the water

  that was its own.

  I pass and I remain, like the Universe.

  XLIX

  I go inside and shut the window.

  The lamp is brought and I’m told good night.

  And my voice contentedly says good night.

  May this be my life, now and always:

  The day bright with sunshine, or gentle with rain,

  Or stormy as if the world were ending,

  The evening gentle and my eyes attentive

  To the people passing by my window,

  With my last friendly gaze going to the peaceful trees,

  And then, window shut and the lamp lit,

  Without reading or sleeping and thinking of nothing,

  To feel life flowing through me like a river between its banks,

  And outside a great silence like a god who is sleeping.

  from THE SHEPHERD IN LOVE

  The moon is high up in the sky and it’s spring.

  I think of you and within myself I’m complete.

  A light breeze comes to me from across the hazy fields.

  I think of you and whisper your name. I’m not I: I’m happy.

  Tomorrow you’ll come and walk with me and pick flowers in

  the fields.

  And I’ll walk with you in the fields watching you pick

  flowers.

  I already see you tomorrow picking flowers with me in the

  fields,

  But when you come tomorrow and really walk with me and

  pick flowers,

  For me it will be a joy and a novelty.

  6 JULY 1914

  Now that I feel love,

  I’m interested in fragrances.

  It never used to interest me that flowers have smell.

  Now I feel their fragrance as if I were seeing something new.

  I know they smelled before, even as I know I existed.

  These are things we know outwardly.

  But now I know with the breathing at the back of my head.

  Now flowers have a delicious taste I can smell.

  Now I sometimes wake up and smell before I see.

  23 JULY 1930

  Love is a company.

  I no longer know how to walk the roads alone,

  For I’m no longer able to walk alone.

  A visible thought makes me walk faster

  And see less, and at the same time enjoy all I see.

  Even her absence is something that’s with me.

  And I like her
so much I don’t know how to desire her.

  If I don’t see her, I imagine her and am strong like the tall

  trees.

  But if I see her I tremble, I don’t know what’s happened to

  what I feel in her absence.

  The whole of me is like a force that abandons me.

  All of reality looks at me like a sunflower with her face in the

  middle.

  10 JULY 1930

  Unable to sleep, I spent the whole night seeing her figure all

  by itself

  And seeing it always in ways different from when I see her in

  person.

  I fashion thoughts from my memory of how she is when she

  talks to me,

  And in each thought she’s a variation on her likeness.

  To love is to think.

  And from thinking of her so much, I almost forget to feel.

  I don’t really know what I want, even from her, and she’s all I

  think of.

  My distraction is as large as life.

  When I feel like being with her,

  I almost prefer not being with her,

 

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