Alberto Caeiro

On a whitely cloudy day I get sad, almost afraid,And I begin to meditate about problems I make up.

I__ like to have enough time and quietTo think about absolutely nothing,To not ever feel myself living,To only know myself in others_ eyes, reflected.

I saw that there is no Nature,That Nature doesn__ exist,That there are hills, valleys, plains,That there are trees, flowers, weeds,That there are rivers and stones,But there is not a whole these belong to,That a real and true wholenessIs a sickness of our ideas.

There are no roses in my yard: what wind brought you?But I suddenly come from far away. I was sick for a moment.No wind whatsoever brought you now.Now you__e here.What you were isn__ you, or else the whole rose would be here.

Also at times, on the surface of streams,Water?bubbles formAnd grow and burstAnd have no meaning at allExcept that they__e water?bubblesGrowing and bursting.

I don__ always feel what I know I should feel.My thought crosses the river I swim very slowlyBecause the suit men made it wear weighs it down.

He should be happy because he can think about the unhappiness of others!He__ stupid if he doesn__ know other people__ unhappiness is theirs,And isn__ cured from the outside,Because suffering isn__ like running out of ink,Or a trunk not having iron bands!There being injustice is like there being death.

A stagecoach passed by on the road and went on;And the road didn__ become more beautiful or even more ugly.That__ human action on the outside world.We take nothing away and we put nothing back, we pass by and we forget;And the sun is always punctual every day.(5/7/14)

The man stopped talking and was looking at the sunset.But what does someone who hates and loves want with a sunset?

I think about this, not like someone thinking, but like someone breathing,And I look at flowers and I smile...I don__ know if they understand meOr if I understand them,But I know the truth is in them and in meAnd in our common divinityOf letting ourselves go and live on the EarthAnd carrying us in our arms through the contented SeasonsAnd letting the wind sing us to sleepAnd not have dreams in our sleep.

It__ stranger than every strangenessAnd the dreams of all the poetsAnd the thoughts of all the philosophers,That things are really what they seem to beAnd there__ nothing to understand.

Live, you say, in the present;Live only in the present.But I don__ want the present, I want reality;I want things that exist, not time that measures them.What is the present?It__ something relative to the past and the future.It__ a thing that exists in virtue of other things existing.I only want reality, things without the present.I don__ want to include time in my scheme.I don__ want to think about things as present; I want to think of them as things.I don__ want to separate them from themselves, treating them as present.I shouldn__ even treat them as real.I should treat them as nothing.I should see them, only see them;See them till I can__ think about them.See them without time, without space,To see, dispensing with everything but what you see.And this is the science of seeing, which isn__ a science.

Accept the universeAs the gods gave it to you.If the gods wanted to give you something elseThey__ have done it.If there are other matters and other worldsThere are.

And since today__ all there is for now, that__ everything.Who knows if I__l be dead the day after tomorrow?If I__ dead the day after tomorrow, the thunderstorm day after tomorrowWill be another thunderstorm than if I hadn__ died.Of course I know thunderstorms don__ fall because I see them,But if I weren__ in the world,The world would be different __here would be me the less __nd the thunderstorm would fall on a different world and would be another thunderstorm.No matter what happens, what__ falling is what__l be falling when it falls.(7/10/1930)

I'm one of my sensations.

I__ glad I see with my eyes and not the pages I__e read.

If I knew I was going to die tomorrow,And Spring came the day after tomorrow,I would die peacefully, because it came the day after tomorrow.If that__ its time, when else should it come?I like it that everything is real and everything is right;And I like that it would be like this even if I didn__ like it.And so, if I die now, I die peacefullyBecause everything is real and everything is right.

What comes, when it comes, will be what it is.