The Keeper of Sheep
—excerpt
I don’t believe in God because I’ve never seen him.
If he wanted me to believe in him,
He would doubtless come and talk to me
and walk in through my front door
Saying, Here I am!
(This may sound ridiculous to the ears
Of someone who, because he doesn’t know what it is to look at things,
Doesn’t understand someone who speaks of them
In the way that noticing things teaches us.)
But if God is the flowers and the trees
And hills and the sun and the moonlight,
Then I do believe in him,
I believe in him at all hours,
And my whole life is one long prayer and mass,
And a communion with the eyes and ears.
But if God is the trees and the flowers
And the hills and the moonlight and the sun,
Why do I call him God?
I call him flowers and trees and hills and sun and moonlight;
Because if, so that I might see him, he made himself
Sun and moonlight and flowers and trees and hills,
If he appears to me as trees and hills
And moonlight and sun and flowers,
It’s because he wants me to know him
As trees and hills and flowers and moonlight and sun.
And that’s why I obey him
(What more do I know of God than God knows of himself?),
I obey him, living spontaneously,
Like someone opening his eyes and seeing,
And I call him moonlight and sun and flowers and trees and hills,
And I love him without thinking about him,
And I think him by seeing and hearing,
And I walk with him at all hours.
by Fernando Pessoa
from The Complete Works of Alberto Caeiro
New Directions Books, 2020
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