The Keeper of Sheep XXXIX
The mystery of things – where is it?
Why doesn't it come out
To show us at least that it's mystery?
What do the river and the tree know about it?
And what do I, who am no more than they, know about it?
Whenever I look at things and think about what people think of them,
I laugh like a brook cleanly plashing against a rock.
For the only hidden meaning of things
Is that they have no hidden meaning.
It's the strangest thing of all,
Stranger than all poets' dreams
And all philosophers' thoughts,
That things are really what they seem to be
And there's nothing to understand.
Yes, this is what my senses learned on their own:
Things have no meaning: they exist.
Things are the only hidden meaning of things.
Alberto Caeiro
Translation: 1998, Richard Zenith
From: Fernando Pessoa & Co. – Selected Poems
Apologies for "Wednesday Words" being a day late. I honestly lost track of time.
The mystery of things – where is it?
Why doesn't it come out
To show us at least that it's mystery?
What do the river and the tree know about it?
And what do I, who am no more than they, know about it?
Whenever I look at things and think about what people think of them,
I laugh like a brook cleanly plashing against a rock.
For the only hidden meaning of things
Is that they have no hidden meaning.
It's the strangest thing of all,
Stranger than all poets' dreams
And all philosophers' thoughts,
That things are really what they seem to be
And there's nothing to understand.
Yes, this is what my senses learned on their own:
Things have no meaning: they exist.
Things are the only hidden meaning of things.
Alberto Caeiro
Translation: 1998, Richard Zenith
From: Fernando Pessoa & Co. – Selected Poems
Apologies for "Wednesday Words" being a day late. I honestly lost track of time.
No comments:
Post a Comment