Misc. Pessoa [Ablerto Caeiro]

Fernando Pessoa
Alberto Caeiro

"Yet my sadness is a comfort/For it is natural and right/And it is what should fill the soul/Whenever it thinks it exists/And doesn't notice the hands picking the flowers."
"My thoughts are content./My only regret is that I know they're content,/Since if I did not know it/They would be content and happy/Instead of sadly content."
"Thinking is a discomfort, like walking in the rain/When the wind kicks up and it seems to rain harder."
"And what I see at each moment/Is what I never saw before,/And I'm very good at noticing things./I'm capable of having that sheer wonder /That a newborn child would have/If he realized he'd just been born/Into an endlessly new world."
"I believe in the world as in a daisy,/because I see it. But I don't think about it,/Because to think is to not understand./The world isn't made for us to think about it/(To think is to have eyes that aren't well)/But to look at it and to be in agreement."
"I have no philosophy, I have senses./If I speak of Nature it's not because I know what it is/But because I love it, and for that very reason,/Because those who love never know what they love/Or why they love, or what love is./To love is eternal innocence,/And the only innocence is not to think."
"The only mystery is that some people think about mystery."
"But open your eyes and you see the sun,/And you no longer think about anything,/Because the light of the sun is truer than the thoughts/Of all philosophes and poets./The light of the sun doesn't know what it does,/And so it cannot err and is common and good."
"The ony inner meaning of things/Is that they have no inner meaning at all."
"And so I obey him.(Do I know more about God than God knows about himself?)/I obey him by living spontaneously/As a man who opens his eyes and sees."
"That is why on a hot day/When I enjoy it so much I feel sad,"
"My gaze, blue like the sky,/Is calm like water in the sunlight./It is blue and calm/Because it does not question or marvel too much."
"Because everything is what it is, which is how it should be,/And I accept it, and don't even give thanks,/Since that might suggest I think about it."
"What matters is to know how to see,/To know how to see without thinking,/To know how to see when seeing/And not think when seeing/Nor see when thinking....This requires deep study,/Lessons in unlearning."
"What do I care about people/And what they suffer or suppose they suffer?/Let them be like me, and they won't suffer./All of the world's trouble comes from us fretting over one another,/Whether it be to do good or to do evil./Our soul and the sky and the earth are all we need./To want more is to lose this, and to be unhappy."
"That is the ony mission in the world./To exist clearly,/And to do so without thinknig about it."
"I saw that there is no Nature,/That Nature doesn't exist/That there are hills, valleys, and plains,/That there are rivers and stones,/But that there is no whole to which all this belongs,/That a true and real ensemble/Is a disease of our own ideas./Nature is parts without whole."
"I see the rivers better when I walk with you...I see them much more clearly./You haven't taken Nature from me,/You've changed Nature./You've brought Nature closer./Because you exist I see it better, though the same as before./Because you love me I love it in the same way, but more./Because you chose me to have you and love you/My eyes gaze at it more than anything."
"There are ways for doing all things,/And love also has its way...I loved, and was not loved, which I only saw in the end,/For one is not loved as one is born but as may happen./And I am still alone in the field, like before...How vast the field is and how tiny love!/I look, and I forget, as the world buries and trees lose their leaves."
"He had not, after all, been loved./When he stood up from the slope and the false truth, he saw everthing: The wide valleys full of the same shades of green as always,/The tall mountains in the distance, more real than any feeling,/All of reality, with the sky and air and fields that exist, they're here./(And again the air, that he'd missed for so long, entered fresh into his lungs.)/And he felt the air reopen, with pain, a freedom in his chest."
"When Spring returns/Perhaps I will no longer be in the world....Nothing returns, nothing repeats, because everything is real."
"If I die very young, take note:/I was never more than a child who played...I was happy because I didn't ask for anything,/ I didn't try to find anything,/And I didn't think there was any explanation beyond/The word explanation meaning nothing at all."
"Once I loved and thought I'd be loved back,/But I wasn't loved ./I wasn't loved for one overwhelming reason:/It wasn't meant to be./I took consolation in the sun and the rain./"
"I never go beyond immediate reality./There is nothing beyond immediate reality."
"He knows there's no reason for anything to exist,/And he knows that to exist is to occupy a point./What he doesn't know is that thought is not a point."
"The existence of injustice is like the existence of death./I would never make a move to fight/Against what is called the injustice of the world."
"They spoke to me of people, and of humanity,/But I've never seen people, or humanity./I've seen various people, astonishingly dissimilar,/Each separated from the next by an unpeopled space."
"I appreciate your presence with just my eyes./To see a thing always for the first time is better than to know it./
"I who have eyes that are only for seeing,/See an absence of meaning in all things./And seeing this, I love myself, since to be a thing is to mean nothing../To be a thing is to be subject to no interpretation./
"For me this sun, these meadows and these flowers are enough."
"So has my life always been, and so I would like it always to be-/I go where the wind takes me and don't need to think."
"For this reason it is said that the gods never die./ For this reason the gods do not have body and soul/But just body, and they are perfect./The body is their soul,/ And they have consciousness in their divine flesh."
"I lifted my right hand to wave at the sun, But I did not wave at it in farewell./I was glad I could still see it-that's all."