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,
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!
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,