The voices / 73 fragments

Alberto Caeiro

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01Undated

I don’t have a philosophy: I have senses...If I talk about Nature, it’s not because I know what it is,But because I love it, and that’s why I love it,Because when you love you never know what you love,Or why you love, or what love is.Loving is eternal innocence,And the only innocence is not thinking.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

02Undated

It’s an already inside outside,The philosophers say it’s the soulBut it’s not the soul: it’s the animal or the man itselfIn its way of existing.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

03Undated

She’s a manner of speaking.Even the flowers don’t come back, or the green leaves.There are new flowers, new green leaves.There are other beautiful days.Nothing comes back, nothing repeats itself, because everything is real.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

04Undated

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.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

05Undated

What comes, when it comes, will be what it is.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

06Undated

If I knew I was going to die tomorrow,And Spring came the day after tomorrow,I would die peacefully, because it came the day after tomorrow.If that’s its time, when else should it come?I like it that everything is real and everything is right;And I like that it would be like this even if I didn’t like it.And so, if I die now, I die peacefullyBecause everything is real and everything is right.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

07Undated

I’m glad I see with my eyes and not the pages I’ve read.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

08Undated

I'm one of my sensations.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

09Undated

Accept the universeAs the gods gave it to you.If the gods wanted to give you something elseThey’d have done it.If there are other matters and other worldsThere are.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

10Undated

And since today’s all there is for now, that’s everything.Who knows if I’ll be dead the day after tomorrow?If I’m dead the day after tomorrow, the thunderstorm day after tomorrowWill be another thunderstorm than if I hadn’t died.Of course I know thunderstorms don’t fall because I see them,But if I weren’t in the world,The world would be different —There would be me the less —And the thunderstorm would fall on a different world and would be another thunderstorm.No matter what happens, what’s falling is what’ll be falling when it falls.(7/10/1930)

Alberto Caeiro / quote

11Undated

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.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

12Undated

The man stopped talking and was looking at the sunset.But what does someone who hates and loves want with a sunset?

Alberto Caeiro / quote

13Undated

I think about this, not like someone thinking, but like someone breathing,And I look at flowers and I smile...I don’t know if they understand meOr if I understand them,But I know the truth is in them and in meAnd in our common divinityOf letting ourselves go and live on the EarthAnd carrying us in our arms through the contented SeasonsAnd letting the wind sing us to sleepAnd not have dreams in our sleep.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

14Undated

Live, you say, in the present;Live only in the present.But I don’t want the present, I want reality;I want things that exist, not time that measures them.What is the present?It’s something relative to the past and the future.It’s a thing that exists in virtue of other things existing.I only want reality, things without the present.I don’t want to include time in my scheme.I don’t want to think about things as present; I want to think of them as things.I don’t want to separate them from themselves, treating them as present.I shouldn’t even treat them as real.I should treat them as nothing.I should see them, only see them;See them till I can’t think about them.See them without time, without space,To see, dispensing with everything but what you see.And this is the science of seeing, which isn’t a science.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

15Undated

He should be happy because he can think about the unhappiness of others!He’s stupid if he doesn’t know other people’s unhappiness is theirs,And isn’t cured from the outside,Because suffering isn’t like running out of ink,Or a trunk not having iron bands!There being injustice is like there being death.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

16Undated

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.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

17Undated

A stagecoach passed by on the road and went on;And the road didn’t become more beautiful or even more ugly.That’s human action on the outside world.We take nothing away and we put nothing back, we pass by and we forget;And the sun is always punctual every day.(5/7/14)

Alberto Caeiro / quote

18Undated

Also at times, on the surface of streams,Water?bubbles formAnd grow and burstAnd have no meaning at allExcept that they’re water?bubblesGrowing and bursting.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

19Undated

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.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

20Undated

I saw that there is no Nature,That Nature doesn’t exist,That there are hills, valleys, plains,That there are trees, flowers, weeds,That there are rivers and stones,But there is not a whole these belong to,That a real and true wholenessIs a sickness of our ideas.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

21Undated

I’m in no hurry: the sun and the moon aren’t, either.Nobody goes faster than the legs they have.If where I want to go is far away, I’m not there in an instant.(6/20/1919)

Alberto Caeiro / quote

22Undated

I pass and I stay, like the Universe.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

23Undated

Everything’s different from us. That’s why everything exists.

Alberto Caeiro / quote

24Undated

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.

Alberto Caeiro / quote