#fpessoa

by Alberto Caeiro (Fernando Pessoa) translated by Edouard Roditi

The frightful reality of things Is my everyday discovery. Each thing is what it is. How can I explain to anyone how much I rejoice over this, and find it enough?

To be whole, it is enough to exist.

I have written quite a number of poems And may write many more, of course. Each poem of mine explains it, Though all my poems are different, Because each thing that exists is always proclaiming it.

Sometimes I busy myself with watching a stone, I don't begin thinking whether it feels. I don't force myself to call it my sister,

But I enjoy it because of its being a stone, I enjoy it because it feels nothing, I enjoy it because it is not at all related to me.

At times I also hear the wind blow by And find that merely to hear the wind blow makes         it worth having been born.

I don't know what others will think who read this; But I find it must be good because I think it        without effort, And without the idea of others hearing me think, Because I think it without thoughts, Because I say it as my words say it.

by Ricardo Reis (Fernando Pessoa) translated by Edouard Roditi

1. Of the gardens of Adonis, Lydia, I love Most of all those fugitive roses         That on the day they are born,         That very day, must also die. Eternal, for them, the light of day: They're born when the sun is already high         And die before Apollo's course

        Across the visible sky is run. We too, of our lives, must make one day: We never know, my Lydia, nor want        To know of nights before or after        The little while that we may last.