Fernando Pessoa

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

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:
...

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.
...

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.
...

We are born at sunset and we die ere morn,
And the whole darkness of the world we know,
How can we guess its truth, to darkness born,
...

How can I think, or edge my thoughts to action,
When the miserly press of each day's need
Aches to a narrowness of spilled distraction
...

When I should be asleep to mine own voice
In telling thee how much thy love's my dream,
I find me listening to myself, the noise
...

When I do think my meanest line shall be
More in Time's use than my creating whole,
That future eyes more clearly shall feel me
...

Oh to be idle loving idleness!
But I am idle all in hate of me;
Ever in action's dream, in the false stress
...

Like to a ship that storms urge on its course,
By its own trials our soul is surer made.
The very things that make the voyage worse
...

Beauty and love let no one separate,
Whom exact Nature did to each other fit,
Giving to Beauty love as finishing fate
...

I could not think of thee as piecèd rot,
Yet such thou wert, for thou hadst been long dead;
Yet thou liv'dst entire in my seeing thought
...

Like a bad suitor desperate and trembling
From the mixed sense of being not loved and loving,
Who with feared longing half would know, dissembling
...

Indefinite space, which, by co-substance night,
In one black mystery two void mysteries blends;
The stray stars, whose innumerable light
...

Thy words are torture to me, that scarce grieve thee-
That entire death shall null my entire thought;
And I feel torture, not that I believe thee,
...

As a bad orator, badly o'er-book-skilled,
Doth overflow his purpose with made heat,
And, like a clock, winds with withoutness willed
...

As the lone, frighted user of a night-road
Suddenly turns round, nothing to detect,
...

We never joy enjoy to that full point
Regret doth wish joy had enjoyèd been,
Nor have the strength regret to disappoint
...