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 Cezary Nowak, Sunflowers

My glance is clear like a sunflower.
I usually take to the roads,
Looking to my right and to my left,
And now and then looking behind me...
And what I see each moment
Is something I'd never seen before,
And I'm good at noticing such things...
I know how to feel the same essential wonder
That an infant feels if, on being born,
He could note he'd really been born...
I feel that I am being born each moment
Into the eternal newness of the World...

I believe in the World as in a Daisy
Because I see it. But I don't think about it
Because thinking is not understanding...
The World was not made for us to think about
(To think is to be eye-sick)
But for us to look at and be in tune with...

I have no philosophy: I have senses...
If I speak of Nature, it's not because I know what
     Nature is
But because I love it, and that's why I love it,
For a lover never knows what he loves,
Why he loves or what love is...
Loving is eternal innocence,
And the only innocence is not think...

from «The keeper of Sheep», Alberto Caeiro

Only Nature is divine, and she's not divine...

if I speak of her as a being
it's because to speak of her I must use the language
     of men
Which endows things with personality,
And forces names upon things.
But things have neither name nor personality -
They exist, and the sky is vast and the earth wide,
And our hearts the size of a clenched fist...

Bless me for all I do not know.
I enjoy it all as one who knows there's always sun.

in «The keeper of sheep» , by Alberto Caeiro
(«Poems of fernando Pessoa»)

 [...]

One wildly clear day,
The kind when you wish you had done a pile of work
Not to have to do any that day,
I caught sight, like a road ahead among trees,
Of what may be the Great Secret,
That Great Mystery the false poets speak of.

I saw that in no Nature,
That Nature does not exist,
That there are mountains, valleys, plains,
That there are trees, flowers, grasses,
That there are steams and stones,
But that there's not a whole to which this belongs,
That any real and true connection
Is a disease of our ideas.
Nature is parts without a whole.
This perhaps is that mystery they speak of.

This was what without thought or even a pause
I realised must be the truth
Which all set out to find and do not find
 And I alone, because I did not try to find it, found.

I take myself indoors and shut the window.
They bring the lamp and give me goodnight,
And my contented voice gives them goodnight.
O that my life may always be this:
The day full of sun, or soft with rain,
Or stormy as if the word were coming to an end,
The evening soft and the groups of people passing
Watched with interest from the window,
The last friendly look given the calm of the trees,
And then, the window shut, the lamp lit,
Not reading anything, nor thinking of anything, not sleeping,
To feel life flowing over me like a stream over its bed,
And out there a great silence like a god asleep.

in «Selected Poems» translated by J.Griffin

To think of God is to disobey God
Because God wanted us not to know him,
And therefore did not show himself to us...
Let's be calm and simple,
Like brooks and trees,
And God will love us for it, make us
Beautiful as brooks and trees,
And will give us the green of the spring,
And a river to go to when we are done!...

from «The keeper of Sheep» by Alberto Caeiro

I never kept sheep,
But it's as if I'd done so.
My soul is like a shepherd.
It knows wind and sun
Walking hand in hand with the Seasons
Observing, and following along.
All of Nature's unpeopled peacefulness
Comes to sit alongside me.
Still I'm sad as a sunset is
To the imagination,
When it grows cold at the end of the plain
And you feel the night come in
Like a butterfly through the window.

But my sadness is comforting
Because it's right and natural
And because it's what the soul should feel
And the hands picks flowers
And the soul takes no notice.

...

I greet everyone who'll read me,
Tipping my wide-brimmed hat to them
As they see me at my door
Just as the coach tips the top of the hill.
I salute them and wish them sunshine,
And rain when rain is called for,
And may their houses contain
Near an open window
Somebody's favorite chair
Where they sit, reading my poems.
And when reading my poems thinking
Of me as something quite natural -
An ancient tree, for instance,
In whose shade they thumped down
When they were children, tired after play,
Wiping the sweat off their hot foreheads
With the sleeve of their striped smocks.

 in «The keeper of Sheep», Alberto Caeiro

Alberto Caeiro Work index►

 
If I could take a bite of the whole earth
And get a taste of it,
I'd be happier for a moment...
But I don't always want to be happy.
One must be unhappy now and then
Just to be able to be natural...

Not every day is fair,
And when there's a drought, you look for rain.
That's why I take the happy with the sad
Naturally, like someone not surprised
There are mountains and plains,
Rocks and grass...

One must be natural and easy,
Take the happy with the sad,
Feel as one who looks,
Think as one who walks,
And, when it's time to die, remember the day dies too,
     enduring night...
That's how it is, and so be it...

  Alberto Caeiro

 «English Poems by Fernando Pessoa»

My gaze, blue like the sky,
Is calm like water in the sunlight.
it is blue and calm
Because it does not question or marvel too much.

If I questioned and marveled,
New flowers would not sprout in the meadows,
Nor would anything change in the sun to make ir more beautiful.

(Even if new flowers sprouted in the meadow
And the sun changed to become more beautiful,
I would feel less flowers in the meadow
And find the sun less beautiful.
Because everything is what it is, which is how it shoul be,
And I accept it, and don't even give thanks,
Since that might suggest I think about it.)

«English Poems by Fernando Pessoa» 

 [...]

There is ample metaphysics in not thinking at all.

What do I think about the world?

How should I know what I think about the world?
If I were ill I would think about it.

What idea have I about things?
What opinion do I have on causes and effects?
What meditations have I had upon God and the soul
And upon the creation of the World?
I don't know. For me, to think about that is to shut
me eyes.
And not think. It is to draw the curtains
Of my window (but it has no curtains).

The mystery of things? How should I know I know what
mystery is?

The only mystery is there being somebody who might
think about mystery.
A man who stands in the sun and shuts his eyes
Begins not to know what the sun is
And to think many things full of heat.

But he opens his eyes and sees the sun,
And now he cannot think of anything,
Because the light of the sun is worth more than the
 thoughts
Of all the philosophers and all the poets.
The light of the sun does not know what it is doing
And so does stray and is common and good.

Metaphysics? What metaphysics do those trees have?
That of being green and having crowns and branches
And that of giving fruit at their hours, - which is not
 what makes us think,
Us, who don't know to be aware of them.
But what better metaphysics than theirs,
Which is not knowing why they live
And not knowing they don't know?

  [...]

in 'Selected Poems' translated by J. Griffin  

Keep Reading Alberto Caeiro Poetry►

Alberto Caeiro Work index► 

There are fallen angels in the way you look
    And great bridges over silent streams's at' your smile.
Your gestures are lonely princess dreaming over a book
    At a window over a lake, on some distant isle.

If I were to  stretch my lands and touch yours that would be
    Dawn behind the turrets of a city in some East.
The words in my gestura would .
    Of your being something in my soul like gaety on a fiest? stretch my hand

Let your silence tell me of numberless dreams that are you
    Let the drooping of your eyelids prolong landsacapes far away.

Read "The keeper of Sheep"►

Alberto Caeiro Work index►