Fernando Pessoa, Selected Poems, Translated by Peter RIckard o o o I know not who I was in what I am today Demogorgon: misreading

of demiurgon (maker), a scribal error become god. Examples of fusion of seeing and hearing: rain can be seen audibly falling, and the windows of the church seen from outside are the sound of the rain heard from inside

I. Fernando Pessoa (1) Oh church bell in my village, Plaintive in the evening calm, Your tolling ever calls awake An echo in my soul.

So slow and lingering is your rhythm, So sad, as if on life's account, That the first stroke of the sequence Has a sound already heard.

However near to me you ring When I pass by, ever wandering, You seem to me to be a dream, In my soul a far-off echo.

At every sounding stroke of yours Throbbing through the cloudless sky, I feel the past is further off, And longing ever nearer.

(5) The sudden hand of some mysterious ghost Between the folds of night and of my sleep Shakes me to wakefulness, and helpless In the night I discern neither shape nor movement.

But an age-old dread, which I bear In my heart unburied, as from a throne Descending asserts itself my lord and master With no imperious word or nod or insult.

And all at once I feel my life Bound with a bond of Unconsciousness To some nocturnal hand which guides me.

I feel that I am no one but the shadow Of a shape which awes me though I see it not, And I exist in nothing, like the chilly dark.

II. Alvaro de Campos

(23) Tobacco-Shop

I'm nothing.

That's all I'll ever be. Nothing, with no will-power to be something. With that reservation, my dreams are boundless. You windows in this room of mine, The room of one of the world's millions whose identity no one knows (And if the knew, would they be any the wiser?), You look out on the mystery of a street with people passing all the time, A street beyond the reach of all thought, Real, its reality impossible, certain, its certainty unknown, Where mystery underlies stones and beings, Where death makes walls damp and mens hair white, Where Fate drives the card of All along the road to Nothing. Today Im beaten, as though I knew the truth. Today Im lucid, as though about to die, As though I had no more brotherhood with things Than saying good-bye, as this house and this side of the street Turns into a train with a string of carriages pulling out when the whistle blows Inside my head, With my nerves jarring and my bones creaking as it goes.

Today Im at a loss, like one who has thought and found the answer, then forgot. Today Im torn between my loyalty To a thing of outward reality the tobacco-shop across the street, And to a thing of inward reality, - the feeling that its all a dream.

Ive failed in everything. Since I never had an aim, perhaps what I failed in was nothing. As for the training they gave me,

I climbed out of it through the back-room window. I went to the country with great schemes in mind, But then I found only trees and grass, And when there were people, they were the same as others. I move away from the window and sit down on a chair. What shall I think about?

How should I know what Ill be, when I dont even know what I am? Be what I think I am? But I think Im so many things, And there are so many thinking theyre the same thing that they cant all be right! A genius? At this very moment A hundred thousand brains are dreaming that theyre geniuses like me, Yet history is unlikely to record a single name, And all those would-be conquests will be so much chaff, no more. No, I dont believe in myself. Every asylum has its crazy fools brim-full of certainty! Im certain of nothing: does that make me more certain, or less? No, not even in myself Is there a single garret or non-garret in this world That hasnt a self-styled genius dreaming inside it right now? How many lofty, noble, lucid aspirations Yes, truly lofty, noble and lucid , (And for all we know they might even be fulfilled) Will never see the true light of day, nor find a hearing? The world is for the one born to conquer it, Not for the one who dreams he can, even if hes right. In dreams Ive achieved more than Napoleon. Ive clasped to my hypothetical breast more human races than Christ, Ive secretly devised philosophies no Kant ever wrote.

Yet Ill probably always be what I am now, the fellow in the garret, Though I dont live there; Ill always be the one who wasnt born for that; Ill always just be the one who had it in him; Ill always be the one who waited for the door to open in the doorless wall. Who sang the song of Infinity in a hen-coop, And heard the voice of God in a covered well. Believe in myself? No, nor in anything else. Let Nature pour over my fevered head Her sunshine, her rain, the wind I can feel in my hair, And let the rest come if it will, or come if it must, or not come at all. Cardiac slaves of the stars, Weve conquered the whole world before we get out of bed, But once were outside its inscrutable, Once were up its foreign, Once were out of doors its the whole earth, Plus the Solar System, the Milky Way and Infinite Space.

(Eat those chocolates, little girl; Eat those chocolates!)

(24) Demogorgon Dim sunlight floods the street where houses stand people walk. Chilled by a sadness charged with dread, I sense something about to happen beyond the house-fronts and the walking. No, no, not that!

Anything but knowledge of the Mystery! Oh Lowered Eyelids, Surface of the Universe, Remain forever closed! The gaze of Ultimate Truth can surely not be borne!

(25) In the terror of night the stuff all nights are made of, In the sleeplessness of night the stuff my nights are made of, I remember, awake in irksome lethargy, I remember what I did and could have done with life, I remember and anguish Pervades my being like a creeping fear or chill. Me irremediable past thats the corpse on my hands! All other corpses may be just illusions. All the dead may live on somewhere else. All my past moments may exist elsewhere. In the illusion of time and space, In the mirage of unfolding events. But what I never was, what I never did, what I never even dreamed; What I see only now that I ought to have done, See clearly only now that I ought to have been Its that thats dead beyond the gods recalling, And thought it was the best of me, not even they can give it life

If at some point in time I had turned left instead of right; If at some moment

I had said yes instead of no, or no instead of yes; If, in conversation, I had used the words which only now I drowsily devise If all that had been so Id be different now, and perhaps the universe itself Would be subtly induced to be different too.

(26) Birthday In the days when my birthday was still an event, I was happy and no one had died. In the old house, even my birthdays were an age-old tradition, And for me and for all, joy was as sure as any religion.

III. Alberto Caeiro (42) XLIV In the night I suddenly awake, And my watch utterly pervades the night. Nature out there is beyond my ken. My room is something dark with dim white walls. Outside is peace, as if nothing existed. The watch alone still makes its noise. And this little cluster of cogwheels, lying on my table, Muffles the very existence of earth and heaven I almost forget myself and wonder what it means, But I stop short, and find myself faintly smiling in the dark,

For the only thing my watch means or stands for, As it fills the boundless night with its tiny self, Is the odd feeling that it fulls the boundless night With its tiny self

From SPORADIC POEMS (44) I cut the orange in two, and couldnt make the two parts equal. To which was I unjust? Im going to eat them both!

(48) Its night: a very dark night. In a house a long way off A lighted window shines. I see it and feel human from head to foot. Its strange how the whole life of the one who lives there I dont know whoDraws me with just that light seen from afar.