Fernando Pessoa

I don’t know how many souls I have.

I’ve changed at every moment.

I always feel like a stranger.

I’ve never seen or found myself.

From being so much, I have only soul.

A man who has soul has no calm.

A man who sees is just what he sees.

A man who feels is not who he is.

Attentive to what I am and see,

I become them and stop being I.

Each of my dreams and each desire

Belongs to whoever had it, not me.

I am my own landscape,

I watch myself journey -

Various, mobile, and alone.

Here where I am I can’t feel myself.

That’s why I read, as a stranger,

My being as if it were pages.

Not knowing what will come

And forgetting what has passed,

I note in the margin of my reading

What I thought I felt.

Rereading, I wonder: “Was that me?”

God knows, because he wrote it.


~*.*~

Não sei quantas almas tenho.
Cada momento mudei.
Continuamente me estranho.
Nunca me vi nem acabei.
De tanto ser, só tenho alma.
Quem tem alma não tem calma.
Quem vê é só o que vê,
Quem sente não é quem é,

Atento ao que sou e vejo,
Torno-me eles e não eu.
Cada meu sonho ou desejo
É do que nasce e não meu.
Sou minha própria paisagem;
Assisto à minha passagem,
Diverso, móbil e só,
Não sei sentir-me onde estou.

Por isso, alheio, vou lendo
Como páginas, meu ser.
O que sogue não prevendo,
O que passou a esquecer.
Noto à margem do que li
O que julguei que senti.
Releio e digo: “Fui eu?”
Deus sabe, porque o escreveu.

Poem in a Straight Line - Fernando Pessoa

I never knew who had never been screwed up in life.

Everyone I know have been champions in everything.

And I so often paltry, often pork, often vile,
I often unanswerable parasite,
Unexcusable dirty,
I, who often have no patience even to take a bath
I, who so often have been ridiculous, absurd,
I wrapped the feet of carpet in publicly labels,
I have been grotesque, petty, arrogant and submissive,
I have suffered and insults quiet
And when I do not have been quiet, I have been even more ridiculous;
I, who have been hilarious for the servants of hotel,
I, I felt the eyes of guys blink of freight,
I, who have made financial shame, borrowed without pay,
I, that when the time's punch came, I have been crouching down
Out the possibility of the punch;
I, who have suffered the anguish of the silly little things,
I see that I dont have a pair in it all in this world.

All the people I know and talk to me
Never had a ridiculous act, never suffered insults,
They were always nothing but a prince - all princes - in life ...

I wish to hear the voice of someone
Who confess not a sin, but a scandal;
That counts, not the violence, but a cowardly!
They are all the Ideal, that I hear and speak.
Who in this wide world must confess that once was vile?
Oh princes, my brothers,

Go, I'm sick of demigod!
Where are people in this world?

So only I am who is vile and wrong in this land?

Women may not have been loved them,
May have been betrayed - but not ridiculous!
And I, I have been ridiculous and haven't been betrayed,
How can I talk to my superiors without waver?
I, that have been vile, vile literally,
Vil in the sense of dread and petty meanness.

Fernando Pessoa (under the pseudonym of Alvaro de Campos)