Alberto Caeiro

IF THEY want to write my biography after I die,
There couldn't be anything simpler.
There are only two dates-my birth and my death.
Between one and the other all the days are mine.

I'm easy to define.
I saw like mad.
I loved things without any sentimentality at all.
I never wanted something I couldn't get because I never went blind.
Even hearing was never anything but an accompaniment to seeing.
I understood that things are real and all different from each another;
I understood this with my eyes, never with my thought.
If I understood it with thought I would've found everything the same.

One day I got sleepy like any kid.
I shut my eyes and slept.
Besides that, I was Nature's only poet.

(11/8/1915)

[trans. Chris Daniels & Dana Stevens]

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