Alberto Caeiro

Yes: I exist inside my body.I__ not carrying the sun and the moon in my pocket.I don__ want to conquer worlds because I slept badly,And I don__ want to eat the world for breakfast because I have a stomach.Indifferent?No: a son of the earth, who, if he jumps, it__ wrong,A moment in the air that__ not for us,And only happy when his feet hit the ground again,Pow! In reality where nothing__ missing!(6/20/1919)

Sometimes in the evening on Summer days,Even when there__ not a breeze at all, it seemsLike there__ a light breeze blowing for a minuteBut the trees are unmovingIn every leaf of their leavesAnd our feelings have had an illusion,An illusion of what would please them...

Yes, this is what my senses alone have learned:__hings don__ have significance: they only have existence.Things are the only hidden meaning of things.

If they want me to have mysticism, okay, I__e got it.I__ a mystic, but only in my body,My soul is simple and doesn__ think.

I__ in no hurry: the sun and the moon aren__, either.Nobody goes faster than the legs they have.If where I want to go is far away, I__ not there in an instant.

Nature never remembers, that__ why she__ beautiful.

Let__ be simple and calm,Like brooks and trees,And God will love us by makingBeautiful things like the trees and brooks for us,And give us greenness in his spring,And a river for us to go to when we end...

One day when God fell asleepAnd the Holy Ghost went off flying,He got into a box of miracles and stole three.With the first he made it so that no one would know he had run away.With the second he made himself a human boy forever.With the third he created a Christ eternally crucifiedAnd left him nailed to the cross that there is in HeavenWhere he__ used as a model for other crosses.Then he ran away to the sunAnd came down on the first ray he caught.

And sometimes if I wantTo imagine I__ a lamb(Or a whole flockSpreading out all over the hillsideSo I can be a lot of happy things at the same time),It__ only because I feel what I write at sunset,Or when a cloud passes its hand over the lightAnd silence runs over the grass outside.When I sit and write poemsOr, walking along the roads or pathways,I write poems on the paper in my thoughts,I feel a staff in my handAnd see my silhouetteOn top of a knoll,Looking after my flock and seeing my ideas,Or looking after my ideas and seeing my flock,With a silly smile like someone who doesn__ understand what somebody__ sayingBut tries to pretend they do.

I__ a keeper of flocks.The flock is my thoughtsAnd my thoughts are all sensations.I think with my eyes and with my earsAnd with my hands and feetAnd with my nose and mouth.Thinking about a flower is seeing and smelling itAnd eating a piece of fruit is knowing its meaning.That__ why when on a hot dayI feel sad from liking it so much,And I throw myself lengthwise on the grassAnd shut my hot eyes,And feeling my whole body lying on reality,I know the truth and I__ happy.

But if God is the flowers and the treesAnd the hills and the sun and the moonlight,Then I believe in him,Then I believe in him all the time,And my whole life is an oration and a mass,And a communion with my eyes and through my ears.

Praise be to God I__ not good,And have the natural egotism of flowersAnd rivers following their bedPreoccupied without knowing itOnly with blooming and flowing.This is the only mission in the World,This__o exist clearly,And to know how to do it without thinking about it.)

Things don__ have significance: they only have existence.Things are the only hidden meaning of things.

What does this think about that?Nothing thinks about anything.Does the earth have consciousness of its stones and plants?If it did, it would be people. . .Why am I worrying about this?If I think about these things,I__l stop seeing trees and plantsAnd stop seeing the EarthFor only seeing my thoughts...I__l get unhappy and stay in the dark.And so, without thinking, I have the Earth and the Sky.

And I find a happiness in the fact of accepting __n the sublimely scientific and difficult fact of accepting the inevitable natural.

A kid thinking about fairy tales and believing in fairy talesActs like a sick god, but like a god.Because even though he affirms that what doesn__ exist exists,He knows things exist, that he exists,He knows existing exists and doesn__ explain itself,And he knows there__ no reason at all for anything to exist.He knows being is the point.All he doesn__ know is that thought isn__ the point.(10/1/1917)

If I die very young, hear this:I was never anything but a kid playing.I was a heathen like the sun and the water,I had the universal religion only people don__ have.I was happy because I didn__ ask for anything at all,Or tried to find anything,And I didn__ find any more explanationThan the word explanation having no meaning at all.

Let__ only care about the place where we are.There__ beauty enough in being here and not anywhere else.If there__ someone beyond the curve in the road,Let them worry about what__ past the curve in the road,That__ what the road is to them.