afieldnotebook

17 September 1914

The astonishing reality of things
Is my discovery every day
Each thing is what it is,
And it's hard to explain to someone how happy this makes me,
And how much this suffices me.

All it takes to be complete is to exist.

I've written quite a few poems,
I'll no doubt write many more,
And this is what every poem of mine says,
And all my poems are different,
Because each thing that exists is a different way of saying this.

Sometimes I start looking at stone.
I don't start thinking about whether it exists.
I don't get sidetracked, calling it my sister.
I like it for being a stone,
I like it because it feels nothing,
I like it because it's not related to me in any way.

At other times I hear the wind blow,
And I feel that it is worth being born just to hear the wind blow.

I don't know what people will think when they read this,
But I feel it must be right because I think it without any effort
Or any idea of what people who hear me will think,
Because I think it without thoughts,
Because I say it the way my words say it.

I was once called a materialist poet,
And it surprised me, for I didn't think
I could be called anything.
I'm not even a poet: I see.
If what I write has any value, the value isn't mine
It belongs to my poems.
All this is absolutely independent of my will.

-Fernando Pessoa, 1914