When I look at myself I see a stranger.
So obsessed am I with feeling
That I sometimes lose my way when I step free
From all the sensations I receive.

Crater of the beginning, mud of death,
endless wreckage,
is this your world,
the serpent you forged
over seven long nights?

Sudden September thunderstorm
then long wearisome rains;
still on the beach the fresh
rush of waves;

And suddenly in the street on parade
the exhausted elephants
and monkeys, biggest of buffoons, dwarfs
falsely cheerful, the trapeze artist
who made me want to weep,

I never kept sheep,
But it’s as if I had.
My soul is like a shepherd,
It knows the wind and the sun
And walks hand in hand with the Seasons,
Following and looking.
All the peace of peopleless Nature
Comes to sit by my side.
But I feel as sad as a sunset is
To our imagination,
When we see it fading in the distance
And feel the night enter
Like a butterfly through the open window.

It’s night. The night is very dark. In a house a long way off
Shines the light from a window.
I see it, and I feel human from head to toe.
It’s odd that the whole life of the person who lives there, and who I don’t know,
Draws me in simply because of that distant light.
His life is doubtless real, and he has a face, gestures, family, and profession.
Now, though, all that matters to me is the light in his window.

Grubby, unknown child playing at my door,
I don’t ask if you bring me a message full of symbols.
I’m drawn to you because I’ve never seen you before,
And, of course, if you were clean, you’d be a different child,
You wouldn’t even come here.
Play in the dust, go on, play!

to you
the view
to me

Memory near oblivion. Far death
the voice grinds and vibrates and trembles
the wind denies

“This was the first of Pessoa’s English-language fictitious authors to appear in print—the beginning of Pessoa’s unusual mode of self-othering.”

  Hay, madre, un sitio en el mundo, que se llama París. Un sitio muy grande y lejano y otra vez grande. (There is, mother, a place in the world called Paris. A very big place and far and very big again.) – César Vallejo   In a diary …