Alberto Caeiro: "Discontinuous Poems"

The frightful reality of things

Is my everyday discovery.

Each thing is what it is.

How can I explain to anyone how much

I rejoice over this, and find it enough?

To be whole, it is enough to exist.

I have written quite a number of poems

And may write many more, of course.

Each poem of mine explains it,

Though all my poems are different,

Because each thing that exists is always proclaiming it.

Sometimes I busy myself with watching a stone,

I don't begin thinking whether it feels.

I don't force myself to call it my sister,

But I enjoy it because of its being a stone,

I enjoy it because it feels nothing,

I enjoy it because it is not at all related to me.

At times I also hear the wind blow by

And find that merely to hear the wind blow makes

          it worth having been born.

I don't know what others will think who read this;

But I find it must be good because I think it

         without effort,

And without the idea of others hearing me think,

Because I think it without thoughts,

Because I say it as my words say it.

Once they called me a materialist poet

And I admired myself because I never thought

That I might be called by any name at all.

I am not even a poet: I see.

If what I write has any value, it is not I who am

        valuable.

The value is there, in my verses.

All this has nothing whatever to do with any will

       of mine.

"Discontinuous Poems" by Alberto Caeiro. Translated from the Portuguese by Edouard Roditi. Published in Poetry (October, 1955).

Photography credit: "Wind-Battered Tree and a Stone Wall," by aquaswim (originally color).


 

Alberto Caeiro: "The Herdsman"

I'm herdsman of a flock.
The sheep are my thoughts
And my thoughts are all sensations.
I think with my eyes and my ears
And my hands and feet
And nostrils and mouth.

To think a flower is to see and smell it.
To eat a fruit is to sense its savor.

And that is why, when I feel sad,
In a day of heat, because of so much joy
And lay me down in the grass to rest
And close my sun-warmed eyes,
I feel my whole body relaxed in reality
And know the whole truth and am happy.

"The Herdsman" by Alberto Caeiro (Fernando Pessoa), from Poetry (October, 1955). Translated by Edouard Roditi.

Photography credit: "Young Shepherd Sleeping," by Armineh Johannes, 1992 (originally color).