Fernando Pessoa, bless his heart

"Unable to sleep, I spent the whole night seeing her figure all by itself"
From: The Shepherd in Love
by Fernando Pessoa, translated by Richard Zenith

Unable to sleep, I spent the whole night seeing her figure all by itself
And seeing it always in ways different from when I see her in person.
I fashion thoughts from memory of how she is when she talks to me,
And in each thought she's a variation on her likeness.
To love is to think.
And from thinking of her so much, I almost forgot to feel.
I don't really know what I want, even from her, and she's all I think of.
My distraction is as large as life.
When I feel like being with her,
I almost prefer not being with her,
So as not to have to leave her afterwards.
And I prefer thinking about her, because I'm a little afraid of her as she really is.
I don't really know what I want, and I don't even want to know what I want.
All I want is to think her.
I don't ask anything of anyone, not even her, except to let me think.





"If, after I die, someone wants to write my biography"
From: Uncollected Poems
by Fernando Pessoa, translated by Richard Zenith

If, after I die, someone wants to write my biography,
There's nothing simpler.
It has just two dates - the day I was born and the day I died.
Between the two, all the days are mine.

I'm easy to define.
I saw as if damned to see.
I loved things without any sentimentality.
I never had a desire I couldn't satisfy, because I was never blind.
Even hearing was never more for me than an accompaniment to seeing.
I understood that things are real and all of them different from each other.
I understood this with my eyes, never with my mind.
To understand this with my mind would be to find them all alike.

One day, like a child, I suddenly got tired.
I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

Besides all that, I was the only poet of Nature.





There will be more to come.....