Lucid thoughts...

Lucid thoughts...

Yesterday evening a man of the cities
Talked at the door of the inn.
He talked to me, too.

He talked about justice and the fight for justice
And the workers who suffer,
And constant work, and those who are hungry,
And the rich, who only turn their back to it.

And, looking at me, he saw tears in my eyes
And smiled with sympathy, believing I felt
The hatred he felt, and the compassion
He said he felt.

(But I wasn’t even really listening to him.
What do I care about men
And what they suffer or think they suffer?
Let them be like me—then they wouldn’t suffer.
All the evil in the world comes from us bothering with each other,
Wanting to do good, wanting to do evil.
Our soul and the sky and the earth are enough for us.
To want more is to lose this, and be unhappy.)

What I was thinking about
When the friend of the people talked
(And what moved me to tears),
Was that the distant murmuring of cowbells
That evening didn’t seem like bells of a tiny chapel
Where flowers and brooks were at mass
With simple souls like mine.

(Praise be to God I’m not good,
And have the natural egotism of flowers
And rivers following their bed
Preoccupied without knowing it
Only with blooming and flowing.
This is the only mission in the World,
This—to exist clearly,
And to know how to do it without thinking about it.)

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

(…)

Yesterday the preacher of those truths of his
Talked to me again.
He talked about the suffering of the working classes
(Not about the people who suffer, who are the ones who really suffer when all’s said and done).
He talked about the injustice of some having money,
And other people going hungry, but I don’t know if it’s hunger for food,
Or hunger for someone else’s dessert.
He talked about whatever gets him mad.

He should be happy because he can think about the unhappiness of others!
He’s stupid if he doesn’t know other people’s unhappiness is theirs,
And isn’t cured from the outside,
Because suffering isn’t like running out of ink,
Or a trunk not having iron bands!

There being injustice is like there being death.

I would never take a step to change
What they call the the world’s injustice.
A thousand steps taken for that
Would only be a thousand steps.
I accept injustice like I accept a stone not being a perfect circle,
And a cork tree not growing into a pine or an oak.

I cut an orange in two, and the two parts can’t be equal.
Which one was I unjust to — I, who am going to eat them both?

Alberto Caeiro

“The keeper of flocks”

(Poems: XXXII - undated)

Ah, abram-me outra realidade!
Quero ter, como Blake, a contiguidade dos anjos
E ter visões por almoço.
Quero encontrar as fadas na rua!
Quero desimaginar-me deste mundo feito com garras,
Desta civilização feita com pregos.
Quero viver, como uma bandeira à brisa,
Símbolo de qualquer coisa no alto de uma coisa qualquer!

Depois encerrem-me onde queiram.
Meu coração verdadeiro continuará velando
Pano brasonado a esfinges,
No alto do mastro da visões
Aos quatro ventos do Mistério.
O Norte — o que todos querem
O Sul — o que todos desejam
O Este — de onde tudo vem
O Oeste — aonde tudo finda
— Os quatro ventos do místico ar da civilização
— Os quatro modos de não ter razão, e de entender o mundo

Álvaro de Campos

Tito Colaço

XXVIII _ XII _ MMXIV