The Keeper of Sheep
—an excerpt
The mystery of things, where is it?
If it exists, why doesn’t it at least appear
To show us that it is a mystery?
What does the river or the tree know of mystery?
And I, who am not more real that they are, what do I know of it?
Whenever I look at things and think what men think about them,
I laugh like a stream as it rushes over a stone.
Because the only hidden meaning of things
Is that they have to hidden meaning at all.
It is stranger than all strangenesses,
Than the dreams of all the poets
And the thoughts of all the philosophers,
That things really are what they seem to be
And there is nothing to understand.
Yes, this is what my senses learned on their own:—
Things have no signification: they have existence.
Things are the only hidden meaning of things.
by Fernando Pessoa
from The Complete Works of Alberto Caeiro
New Directions Paperbooks 2020
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