Misc. Pessoa [Ricardo Reiss (the Sad Epicurean)]

Pessoa
Ricardo Reiss (the Sad Epicurean)

"The gods grant nothing more than life,/So let us reject whatever lifts us/To unbreathable heights,/Eternal but flowerless...And as long as the blood in our veins still pulses/And love does not shrivel,/Let us go on...Warmed by the sun,/And reflecting a little.
"What we call laws of how the gods act/Are merely the calm that the gods have./The laws are not over them:/They're the life they desire."
"Why speak to me of those other places/If the waters and meadows/In this place pleases me?/This reality was given by the gods,/Who made it external to make it more real./Can my dreams be any greater/Than the work of the gods?/Leave me with only the Reality of the moment/And my tranquil and manifest gods who live/Not in the Uncertain/But in fields and rivers."
"And let us place on high in our memory,/Like a new god from a new land,/Whatever calm remains in us/From the transitory day."
"And far from Christian sensuality/May the chaste calm of ancient beauty/Restore to us the ancient/Feeling of life."
"All I ask/Is that they leave/My lucid and solemn consciousness/Of beings and of things./Love and glory/Don't matter to me./Wealth is a metal, glory an echo,/And love a shadow."
"Other things pass/And fear death,/But the clear and useless vision of the Universe/Fears and sufferns nothing./Self-sufficing,/It desires nothing/But the pride of always seeing clearly/Until it no longer sees."
"But quietly imitate/Olympus in your heart./The gods are gods/Because they don't think/About what they are."
"I was never one who in love or in friendship/Preferred one sex over the other. Beauty/Attracts me in equal measure, wherever/I find it, in season....Love is not in the object but in the act./I only love something when I start loving it./My love does not reside in it/But in my love."/
"Obey the law, whether, it's wrong or you are./Man can do little against the outer life./Let injustice be./Nothing you change changes./Your only kingdom is the mind you've been given,/ And in it you're a servant to Fate and the Gods."
"I want my verses to be like jewels,/Able to endure into the far future/Untarnished by the death/That lurks in each thing,/Verses which forget the hard and sad/Brevity of our days, taking us bank/to that ancient freedom/We've perhaps never known."
"And since in myself I cannot create beauty,/May I enjoy it as it's given on the outside,/Repeated in my passive eyes,/Ponds which death will dry."
"As if each kiss/Were a kiss of farewell/Let us lovingly Kiss..."
"...But I was only given/One vision of the things that exist on earth,/And an uncertain mind/And the knowledge that we die."
"We are not gods:blind, we fear,/And prefer the meager life we know/To novely, the abyss."
"My eyes see the field, the fields,/The fields, Neaera, and already/I suffer the cold of the darkness/In which I will not have eyes./I can feel, even now, the skull/I'll be when all feeling has ceased,/Unless the unknown shall assign me/Some other, unforseeable end./I weep less for the moment/Than for my future self,/A null and void subject/Of the universal destiny."
"In the inscrutable succession of things,/Only the wise man feels he was nothing/More than the life he left."
"With mortal hand I raise the fragile cup/Of fleeting wine to my mortal mouth,/Eyes clouded,/Ready to stop seeing. "
"Happy the animal, anonymous to itself,/Which gazes in green fields and enters/Death as if it were home;/Or the learned man who, lost/In science, raises his futile, ascetic/Life above our own, like smoke/Which lifts its disintegrating arms/To the nonexistent heavens."
"I'll only be right, if anyone is right,/When death at last confounds my mind/And I no longer see,/For we cannot find and should not find/The remote and profound explanation/For why it is we live."
"What better thing could destin give me/Than the sensual passing of life in moments/Of ignorance like this?/Wise is the one who does not seek./The seeker will find in all things/The abyss, and doubt in himself."
"What we feel, not what is felt,/Is what we have. Winter naturally straitens./Like fate we accept it./May winter wrap earth and not our minds,/As love to love, or book to book, we relish/Our brief warm fire."
"I don't know if the love you give is love you have/Or love you feign. You give it to me.Let that suffice."
"Want little;you'll have everything./Want nothing, you'll be free./The same love by which we're loved/Oppresses us with its wanting."