Fernando Pessoa

Symbols? I'm sick of symbols...
Some people tell me that everything is symbols.
They're telling me nothing.

What symbols? Dreams...
Let the sun be a symbol, fine...
Let the moon be a symbol, fine...
Let the earth be a symbol, fine...
But who notices the sun except when the rain stops
And it breaks through the clouds and points behind its back
To the blue of the sky?
And who notices the moon except to admire
Not it but the beautiful light it radiates?
And who notices the very earth we tread?
We say earth and think of fields, trees and hills,
Unwittingly diminishing it,
For the sea is also earth.

Okay, let all of this be symbols.
But what's the symbol - not the sun, not the moon, not the earth -
In this premature sunset amidst the fading blue
With the sun caught in expiring tatters of clouds
And the moon already mystically present at the other end of the sky
As the last remnant of daylight
Gilds the head of the seamstress who hesitates at the corner
Where she used to linger (she lives nearby) with the boyfriend who left her?
Symbols? I don't want symbols.
All I want - poor frail and forlorn creature! -
Is for the boyfriend to go back to the seamstress.
...

I am tired, that is clear,
Because, at certain stage, people have to be tired.
Of what I am tired, I don't know:
...

I know, I alone
How much it hurts, this heart
With no faith nor law
...

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.
...

Countless lives inhabit us.
I don't know, when I think or feel,
Who it is that thinks or feels.
I am merely the place
Where things are thought or felt.

I have more than just one soul.
There are more I's than I myself.
I exist, nevertheless,
Indifferent to them all.
I silence them: I speak.

The crossing urges of what
I feel or do not feel
Struggle in who I am, but I
Ignore them. They dictate nothing
To the I I know: I write.
...

Your eyes go sad. You're not
Listening to what I say.
They doze, dream, fade out.
...

They say I pretend or lie
All I write. No such thing.
It simply is that I
...

Should somebody one day knock at your door
Announcing he's an emissary of mine,
Never believe him, nor that it is I;
...

At times I have happy ideas,
Ideas suddenly happy, in among ideas
And the words in which they naturally shake free…
...

When I am sitting at the window,
Through the panes, which the snow blurs,
I see the lovely images, hers, as
...

Crown me with roses,
Crown me really
With roses -
...

Hate you, Christ, I do not, or seek. I believe
In you as in the others gods, your elders.
I count you as neither more nor less
...

I never kept sheep,
But it is as I did watch over them.
My soul is like a shepherd,
...

If, after I die, they should want to write my biography,
There's nothing simpler.
I've just two dates - of my birth, and of my death.
...

Whether we write or speak or do but look
We are ever unapparent. What we are
Cannot be transfused into word or book.
...

But no, she's abstract, is a bird
Of sound in the air of air soaring,
...

How many masks wear we, and undermasks,
Upon our countenance of soul, and when,
If for self-sport the soul itself unmasks,
...

My love, and not I, is the egoist.
My love for thee loves itself more than thee;
Ay, more than me, in whom it doth exist,
...

As to a child, I talked my heart asleep
With empty promise of the coming day,
And it slept rather for my words made sleep
Than from a thought of what their sense did say.
...

If that apparent part of life's delight
Our tingled flesh-sense circumscribes were seen
By aught save reflex and co-carnal sight,
Joy, flesh and life might prove but a gross screen.
...