Memory not distinguishing
What I’ve seen from what I’ve been.
7 JUNE 1928
Let my fate deny me everything except
To see it, for I, an unstrict
Stoic, wish to delight in every letter
Of the sentence engraved by Destiny.
21 NOVEMBER 1928
When, Lydia, our autumn arrives
With the winter it harbors, let’s reserve
A thought, not for the future spring,
Which belongs to others,
Nor for the summer, whose deceased we are,
But for what remains of what is passing:
The present yellow that the leaves live
And that makes them different.
13 JUNE 1930
Hesitant, as if forgotten by Aeolus,
The morning breeze caresses the field,
And the sun begins to glimmer.
Let us, Lydia, not wish in this hour
For more sun than this or for a stronger breeze
Than the one that is small and exists.
13 JUNE 1930
Weak in vice, weak in virtue,
Not even in fury does weak humanity
Know more than the norm.
Equals, but different, we govern ourselves
By our own norm, which, though harsh,
Will be freedom.
To be free is to be your own imposed norm,
Like others except in the broad and harsh
Control and use of yourself.
9 JULY 1930
Not just those who envy and hate us
Limit and oppress us; those who love us
Limit us no less.
May the Gods grant me, stripped of all
Affections, the cold freedom of the heights
Of nothingness. Wanting little,
A man has everything. Wanting nothing,
He’s free. Not having and not desiring,
He’s equal, though man, to the Gods.
1 NOVEMBER 1930
Rule or keep quiet. Don’t squander yourself,
Giving what you don’t have.
What good is the Caesar you might have been?
Enjoy being the little you are.
The hovel you’re given is a better shelter
Than the palace you’re owed.
27 SEPTEMBER 1931
If each thing has its corresponding god,
Why shouldn’t I have a god as well?
Why shouldn’t it be me?
It’s in me that this god moves, for I feel.
I clearly see the outside world—
Things and men with no soul.
DECEMBER 1931
No one loves anyone else; he loves
What he finds of himself in the other.
Don’t fret if others don’t love you. They feel
Who you are, and you’re a stranger.
Be who you are, even if never loved.
Secure in yourself, you will suffer
Few sorrows.
10 AUGUST 1932
Nothing of nothing remains. And we are nothing.
In the sun and air we put off briefly
The unbreathable darkness of damp earth
Whose weight we’ll have to bear—
Postponed corpses that procreate.
Laws passed, statues seen, odes finished—
They all have their grave. If we, heaps of flesh
Quickened by the blood of an inner sun,
Must one day set, why not they?
We’re tales telling tales, nothing . . .
28 SEPTEMBER 1932
To be great, be whole: don’t exaggerate
Or leave out any part of you.
Be complete in each thing. Put all you are
Into the least of your acts.
So too in each lake, with its lofty life,
The whole moon shines.
14 FEBRUARY 1933
Calm because I’m unknown,
And myself because I’m calm,
I want to fill my days
With wanting nothing from them.
For those whom wealth touches,
Gold irritates the skin.
For those on whom fame blows,
Life fogs over.
On those for whom happiness
Is their sun, night will fall.
But those who hope for nothing
Are glad for whatever comes.
2 MARCH 1933
Each day you didn’t enjoy wasn’t yours:
You just got through it. Whatever you live
Without enjoying, you don’t live.
You don’t have to love or drink or smile.
The sun’s reflection in a puddle of water
Is enough, if it pleases you.
Happy those who, placing their delight
In slight things, are never deprived
Of each day’s natural fortune!
14 MARCH 1933
Since we do nothing in this confused world
That lasts or that, lasting, is of any worth,
And even what’s useful for us we lose
So soon, with our own lives,
Let us prefer the pleasure of the moment
To an absurd concern with the future,
Whose only certainty is the harm we suffer now
To pay for its prosperity.
Tomorrow doesn’t exist. This moment
Alone is mine, and I am only who
Exists in this instant, which might be the last
Of the self I pretend to be.
16 MARCH 1933
You’re alone. No one knows it. Hush and feign.
But feign without feigning.
Hope for nothing that’s not already in you.
Each man in himself is everything.
You have sun if there’s sun, trees if you seek them,
Fortune if fortune is yours.
6 APRIL 1933
I love what I see because one day
I’ll stop seeing it. I also
Love it because it is.
In this calm moment when I feel myself
By loving more than by being,
I love all existence and myself.
No better thing could the primitive gods
Give me, were they to return—
They, who also know nothing.
11 OCTOBER 1934
All I ask the gods to grant me is that
I ask them for nothing. Good luck is a yoke
And to be happy oppresses,
For it’s an emotional state.
I want to raise my not easy nor uneasy,
Purely calm being above the plane
Where men rejoice or grieve.
My hand that destroys
The heap of ants
Must seem to them of divine origin,
But I don’t consider myself divine.
Likewise the gods
Perhaps do not see
Themselves as gods, being gods in our eyes
Only because they’re greater than us.
Whatever the case,
Let’s not commit
Completely to a faith, perhaps unfounded,
In those we believe to be gods.
Four times in the false year the false season
Changed, in the immutable course
Of time’s progression.
Dryness follows greenness, and greenness dryness,
And no one knows which is first, which
Is last, and they end.
Of the gods I ask only to be ignored.
Without good or bad luck, I’ll be free,
Like the wind that’s the life
Of the air, which is nothing.
Hatred and love both seek us out;
Both oppress us, each in its own way.
Those to whom the gods
Grant nothing are free.
ÁLVARO DE CAMPOS
I don’t believe in anything but the existence of my sensat
ions; I have no other certainty, not even of the outer universe conveyed to me by those sensations. I don’t see the outer universe, I don’t hear the outer universe, I don’t touch the outer universe. I see my visual impressions; I hear my auditory impressions; I touch my tactile impressions. It’s not with the eyes but with the soul that I see; it’s not with the ears but with the soul that I hear; it’s not with the skin but with the soul that I touch.
And if someone should ask me what the soul is, I’ll answer that it’s me.
(FROM ÁLVARO DE CAMPOS’S NOTES FOR THE MEMORY OF MY MASTER CAEIRO)
OPIARY
It’s before I take opium that my soul is sick.
To feel life is to wilt like a convalescent,
And so I seek in opium’s consolation
An East to the east of the East.
This life on board is sure to kill me.
Fever rages in my head day and night.
And although I search until I’m ill,
I can’t find the spring to set me right.
In paradox and astral incompetence,
In golden folds I live my days,
A wave in which dignity’s a descent
And pleasures are ganglia of my malaise.
It’s through a clockwork of disasters,
A mechanism of pseudo-flywheels,
That I walk among visions of gallows
In a garden of stemless, floating flowers.
I stagger through the handiwork
Of an inner life of lace and lacquer.
It’s as though at home I had the knife
That beheaded St. John the Baptist.
I’m atoning for a crime in a suitcase
That my grandfather committed for fun.
My nerves hang from the gibbet by the dozen,
And I’ve fallen into the pit of opium.
With the soporific nudge of morphine
I lose myself in throbbing transparencies,
And on a diamond-studded night the moon
Rises as if it were my Destiny.
Always a bad student, now
I simply watch the ship plow on
Through the Suez Canal, carrying along
My life, mere camphor in the dawn.
Gone are the days I put to good use.
All I earned from my work was fatigue,
Which feels today like an arm round my neck
That chokes me and keeps me from falling.
I was a child like everyone else,
Born in a small town, Portuguese,
And I’ve met people from England
Who say I speak English with ease.
I’d like to have poems and stories
Published by Plon and Mércure,
But I doubt this life—a voyage
Without storms—can long endure!
Though it has its amusing moments,
Life on board is a sad affair.
I talk with Germans, Swedes and Brits,
But the pain of living is always there.
To sail East to see China and India
Wasn’t worth it after all.
There’s only one way of living,
And the earth’s the same, and small.
That’s why I take opium. As a medicine.
I’m convalescing from the Moment.
I live on thought’s ground floor,
And to see Life go by is a torment.
I smoke. I yawn. Were there only an earth
Where far to the east didn’t become west!
Why did I visit the India that exists,
If there’s no India but the soul I possess?
Disgrace was my only legacy.
The gypsies stole my Fortune.
Perhaps not even near death will I see
A shelter to keep me warm.
I pretended to study engineering.
Lived in Scotland. Saw Ireland on holiday.
Outside the doors of Happiness my heart
Begs for alms like a little old lady.
Don’t call, iron ship, at Port Said!
Turn right, I don’t even know where to.
I pass the days with the count in the smoking room—
A swindling French count who lingers at funerals.
I glumly return to Europe, destined
To become a sleepwalking poet.
I’m a monarchist but not a Catholic,
And I’d like to be someone of note.
I’d like to have money and beliefs,
To be various dull people I’ve seen.
As things stand now, I’m nothing
But a passenger on a ship at sea.
I don’t have any personality.
Even the cabin boy makes a more lasting
Impression with his lofty bearing
Of a Scottish laird who’s been fasting.
I don’t belong anywhere. My country
Is wherever I’m not. I’m sick and weak.
The steward is a rogue. He saw me
One day I’ll cause a scandal on board
Just to make the others tattle.
I’m fed up with life and think it’s natural
That sometimes I fly off the handle.
I spend all day smoking and drinking
American drugs that numb every pain—
I, who am already naturally drunk!
My rose-like nerves need a better brain.
I can hardly even feel the talent
I have for writing these lines.
Life is a big house in the country
That would bore any sensitive mind.
The English were made for existence.
No people has a closer alliance
With Tranquility. Put in a coin
And out comes an Englishman, all smiles.
I belong to that class of Portuguese
Who, once India was discovered, were out
Of work. Death is a sure thing.
This is something I often think about.
To hell with life and having to live it!
I don’t even read the book by my bed.
I’m sick of the East. It’s a painted mat
Whose beauty, once rolled up, is dead.
So I fall into opium. It’s too much
To expect me to live one of those ideal
Lives. Honest people with set times
For going to bed and taking their meals
Can go to the devil! Yes, this is envy.
These keyed-up nerves are my demise.
If only some ship could take me to where
I’d want only what I see with my eyes.
Who am I fooling? I’d still get bored.
I’d want a yet stronger opium, by which
To reach dreams that would finish me off
And pitch me into a muddy ditch.
Fever! If what I have isn’t fever,
Then I don’t know what fever’s like.
The essential fact is that I’m sick.
This hare, friends, has outrun its luck.
Night has fallen. There’s the first blast
Announcing dinner: time to get spruce.
Social life above all else! We’ll promenade
Like dogs until we work our collars loose.
This story is bound to have a less
Than happy close, with blood and a gun
(Hooray!) at the end of my restlessness,
For which nothing can be done.
Whoever sees me must find me banal,
Me and my life . . . A young chap, right!
Even my monocle makes me belong
To a universal stereotype.
How many people like me toe the Line
And, like me, are mystics!
How many, under their de rigueur jackets,
Feel, like me, the horror of existence!
If at least I could be as interesting
On the outside as I am inwardly!
I’m s
piraling toward the Maelstrom’s center.
My doing nothing is what condemned me.
A do-nothing, yes, but with good reason!
Could I but hold everyone in disdain
And be, even if dressed in a shabby suit,
A hero, handsome, damned, or insane!
I feel like sticking my hands in my mouth
And biting until I shake with pain.
It would be an original activity
And amuse the others, the so-called sane.
Absurdity, like a flower from the India
I never found in India, sprouts
In my sick and tired brain. May God
Change my life or else snuff it out . . .
Let me stay here, in this chair,
Until they pack me into a casket.
I was born to be a mandarin
But lack the serenity, tea, and mat.
Ah, how I’d love to fall right from here
Through a trapdoor—clack!—to my grave!
Life tastes to me like mild tobacco.
All I ever did was smoke life away.
What I really want is faith and peace
And to get these sensations under control.
Put an end to this, God! Open the floodgates!
Enough of this comedy in my soul!