Alberto Caeiro

“I love flowers for being flowers, directly.And I love trees for being trees without my thought.”

“If they want me to have mysticism, okay, I’ve got it.I’m a mystic, but only in my body,My soul is simple and doesn’t think.”

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

“If science wants to be truthful,What science is more truthful than the science of things without science?I close my eyes and the hard earth where I’m lyingHas a reality so real even my back feels it.I don’t need reason — I have shoulderblades.”

“A kid thinking about fairy tales and believing in fairy talesActs like a sick god, but like a god.Because even though he affirms that what doesn’t exist exists,He knows things exist, that he exists,He knows existing exists and doesn’t explain itself,And he knows there’s no reason at all for anything to exist.He knows being is the point.All he doesn’t know is that thought isn’t the point.(10/1/1917)”

“If I could take a bite of the whole worldAnd feel it on my palateI’d be more happy for a minute or so...But I don’t always want to be happy.Sometimes you have to beUnhappy to be natural...Not every day is sunny.When there’s been no rain for a while, you pray for it to come.So I take unhappiness with happinessNaturally, like someone who doesn’t find it strangeThat there are mountains and plainsAnd that there are cliffs and grass...What you need is to be natural and calmIn happiness and in unhappiness,To feel like someone seeing,To think like someone walking,And when it’s time to die, remember the day dies,And the sunset is beautiful, and the endless night is beautiful...That’s how it is and that’s how it should be...”

“What does this think about that?Nothing thinks about anything.Does the earth have consciousness of its stones and plants?If it did, it would be people. . .Why am I worrying about this?If I think about these things,I’ll stop seeing trees and plantsAnd stop seeing the EarthFor only seeing my thoughts...I’ll get unhappy and stay in the dark.And so, without thinking, I have the Earth and the Sky.”

“I don’t 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.”

“All beings exist and nothing elseAnd that’s why they’re called beings”

“If I talk about her like she’s a beingIt’s because talking about her I need to use the language of menWhich gives personality to things,And imposes a name on things.”

“The river of my village doesn’t make you think about anything.When you’re at its bank you’re only at its bank.”

“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’re here.What you were isn’t you, or else the whole rose would be here.”

“I was born subject like others to errors and defects,But never to the error of wanting to understand too much,Never to the error of wanting to understand only with the intellect..Never to the defect of demanding of the WorldThat it be anything that’s not the World.”

“To love is to think.And I almost forget to feel only from thinking about her.I don’t know what I want at all, even from her, and I don’t think about anything but her.I have a great animated distraction.When I want to meet her,I almost feel like not meeting her,So I don’t have to leave her afterwards.And I prefer thinking about her, because it’s like I’m afraid of her.I don’t know what I want at all, and I don’t want to know what I want. All I want to do is think about her.I’m asking nothing of nobody, not even her, except to think.”

“I’d 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.”

“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.”

“Things don’t have significance: they only have existence.Things are the only hidden meaning of things.”

“A row of trees far away, there on the hillside.But what is it, a row of trees? It’s just trees.Row and the plural trees aren’t things, they’re names.”

“It’s 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’s nothing to understand.”

“Pensar incomoda como andar à chuvaQuando o vento cresce e parece que chove mais.”