Untitled
The astonishing reality of things
Is my discovery every day.
Each thing is what it is,
And it’s hard to explain to someone how happy this
… makes me,
And how much this suffices me.
All it takes to be complete is to exist.
I’ve written quite a few poems,
I’ll no doubt write many more,
And this is what every poem of mine says,
And all my poems are different,
Because each thing that exists is a different way of saying this.
Sometimes I start looking at a stone.
I don’t start thinking about whether it exists.
I don’t get sidetracked, calling it my sister.
I like it for being a stone,
I like it because it feels nothing,
I like it because it’s not related to me in any way.
At other times I hear the wind blow,
And I feel that it was worth being born just to hear the wind
… blow.
I don’t know what people will think when they read this,
But I feel it must be right since I think it without any effort
Or any idea of what people who hear me will think,
Because I think it without thoughts,
Because I say it the way my words say it.
I was once called a materialist poet,
And it surprised me, for I didn’t think
I could be called anything.
I’m not even a poet: I see.
If what I write has any value, the value isn’t mine,
It belongs to my poems.
All this is absolutely independent of my will.
Fernando Pessoa [as Alberto Caeiro]
from A little Larger Than The Entire Universe
Penguin Classic, 1998