A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe

by Fernando Pessoa

  (FROM AN “INTERVIEW” WITH ALBERTO CAEIRO CONDUCTED IN VIGO)

  from THE KEEPER OF SHEEP

  II

  My gaze is clear like a sunflower.

  It is my custom to walk the roads

  Looking right and left

  And sometimes looking behind me,

  And what I see at each moment

  Is what I never saw before,

  And I’m very good at noticing things.

  I’m capable of feeling the same wonder

  A newborn child would feel

  If he noticed that he’d really and truly been born.

  I feel at each moment that I’ve just been born

  Into a completely new world . . .

  I believe in the world as in a daisy,

  Because I see it. But I don’t think about it,

  Because to think is to not understand.

  The world wasn’t made for us to think about it

  (To think is to have eyes that aren’t well)

  But to look at it and to be in agreement.

  I have no philosophy, I have senses . . .

  If I speak of Nature it’s not because I know what it is

  But because I love it, and for that very reason,

  Because those who love never know what they love

  Or why they love, or what love is.

  To love is eternal innocence,

  And the only innocence is not to think . . .

  8 MARCH 1914

  IV

  This afternoon a thunderstorm

  Rolled down from the slopes of the sky

  Like a huge boulder . . .

  As when someone shakes a tablecloth

  From out of a high window,

  And the crumbs, because they fall together,

  Make a sound when they fall,

  The rain swished down from the sky

  And darkened the roads . . .

  As the bolts of lightning jostled space

  And shook the air

  Like a large head saying no,

  I don’t know why (for I wasn’t afraid),

  But I started to pray to St. Barbara

  As if I were somebody’s old aunt . . .

  Ah, by praying to St. Barbara

  I felt even simpler

  Than I think I am . . .

  I felt common and domestic,

  As if I’d lived my whole life

  Peacefully, like the garden wall,

  Having ideas and feelings the same way

  A flower has scent and color . . .

  I felt like someone who could believe in St. Barbara . . .

  Ah, to be able to believe in St. Barbara!

  (Do those who believe in St. Barbara

  Think she’s like us and visible?

  Or what then do they think of her?)

  (What a sham! What do the flowers,

  The trees and the sheep know

  About St. Barbara? . . . The branch of a tree,

  If it could think, would never

  Invent saints or angels . . .

  It might think that the sun

  Illuminates and that thunder

  Is a sudden noise

  That begins with light . . .

  Ah, how even the simplest men

  Are sick and confused and stupid

  Next to the sheer simplicity

  And healthy existence

  Of plants and trees!)

  And thinking about all this,

  I became less happy again . . .

  I became gloomy and out of sorts and sullen

  Like a day when a thunderstorm threatens all day

  And by night it still hasn’t struck.

  VI

  To think about God is to disobey God,

  Since God wanted us not to know him,

  Which is why he didn’t reveal himself to us . . .

  Let’s be simple and calm,

  Like the trees and streams,

  And God will love us, making us

  Us even as the trees are trees

  And the streams are streams,

  And will give us greenness in the spring, which is its season,

  And a river to go to when we end . . .

  And he’ll give us nothing more, since to give us more would

  make us less us.

  VII

  From my village I see as much of the universe as can be seen

  from the earth,

  And so my village is as large as any town,

  For I am the size of what I see

  And not the size of my height . . .

  In the cities life is smaller

  Than here in my house on top of this hill.

  The big buildings of cities lock up the view,

  They hide the horizon, pulling our gaze far away from the

  open sky.

  They make us small, for they take away all the vastness our

  eyes can see,

  And they make us poor, for our only wealth is seeing.

  VIII

  One midday in late spring

  I had a dream that was like a photograph.

  I saw Jesus Christ come down to earth.

  He came down a hillside

  As a child again,

  Running and tumbling through the grass,

  Pulling up flowers to throw them back down,

  And laughing loud enough to be heard far away.

  He had run away from heaven.

  He was too much like us to fake

  Being the second person of the Trinity.

  In heaven everything was false and in disagreement

  With flowers and trees and stones.

  In heaven he always had to be serious

  And now and then had to become man again

  And get up on the cross, and be forever dying

  With a crown full of thorns on his head,

  A huge nail piercing his feet,

  And even a rag around his waist

  Like on black Africans in illustrated books.

  He wasn’t even allowed a mother and father

  Like other children.

  His father was two different people—

  An old man named Joseph who was a carpenter

  And who wasn’t his father,

  And an idiotic dove:

  The only ugly dove in the world,

  Because it wasn’t of the world and wasn’t a dove.

  And his mother gave birth to him without ever having loved.

  She wasn’t a woman: she was a suitcase

  In which he was sent from heaven.

  And they wanted him, born only of a mother

  And with no father he could love and honor,

  To preach goodness and justice!

  One day when God was sleeping

  And the Holy Spirit was flying about,

  He went to the chest of miracles and stole three.

  He used the first to make everyone blind to his escape.

  He used the second to make himself eternally human and a

  child.

  He used the third to make an eternally crucified Christ

  Whom he left nailed to the cross that’s in heaven

  And serves as the model for all the others.

  Then he fled to the sun

  And descended on the first ray he could catch.

  Today he lives with me in my village.

  He’s a simple child with a pretty laugh.

  He wipes his nose with his right arm,

  Splashes about in puddles,

  Plucks flowers and loves them and forgets them.

  He throws stones at the donkeys,

  Steals fruit from the orchards,

  And runs away crying and screaming from the dogs.

  And because he knows that they don’t like it

  And that everyone thinks it’s funny,

  He runs after the girls

  Who walk in groups along the roads

  Carrying jugs on their heads,

  And he lifts up thei
r skirts.

  He taught me all I know.

  He taught me to look at things.

  He shows me all the things there are in flowers.

  He shows me how curious stones are

  When we hold them in our hand

  And look at them slowly.

  He speaks very badly of God.

  He says God is a sick and stupid old man

  Who’s always swearing

  And spitting on the floor.

  The Virgin Mary spends the afternoons of eternity knitting.

  And the Holy Spirit scratches himself with his beak

  And perches on the chairs, getting them dirty.

  Everything in heaven is stupid, just like the Catholic Church.

  He says God understands nothing

  About the things he created.

  “If he created them, which I doubt,” he says.

  “God claims, for instance, that all beings sing his glory,

  But beings don’t sing anything.

  If they sang, they’d be singers.

  Beings exist, that’s all,

  Which is why they’re called beings.”

  And then, tired of speaking badly about God,

  The little boy Jesus falls asleep in my lap

  And I carry him home in my arms.

  He lives with me in my house, halfway up the hill.

  He’s the Eternal Child, the god who was missing.

  He’s completely natural in his humanity.

  He smiles and plays in his divinity.

  And that’s how I know beyond all doubt

  That he’s truly the little boy Jesus.

  And this child who’s so human he’s divine

  Is my daily life as a poet.

  It’s because he’s always with me that I’m always a poet

  And that my briefest glance

  Fills me with feeling,

  And the faintest sound, whatever it is,

  Seems to be speaking to me.

  The New Child who lives where I live

  Gives one hand to me

  And the other to everything that exists,

  And so the three of us go along whatever road we find,

  Leaping and singing and laughing

  And enjoying our shared secret

  Of knowing that in all the world

  There is no mystery

  And that everything is worthwhile.

  The Eternal Child is always at my side.

  The direction of my gaze is his pointing finger.

  My happy listening to each and every sound

  Is him playfully tickling my ears.

  We get along so well with each other

  In the company of everything

  That we never even think of each other,

  But the two of us live together,

  Intimately connected

  Like the right hand and the left.

  At day’s end we play jacks

  On the doorstep of the house,

  With the solemnity befitting a god and a poet

  And as if each jack

  Were an entire universe,

  Such that it would be a great peril

  To let one fall to the ground.

  Then I tell him stories about purely human matters

  And he smiles, because it’s all so incredible.

  He laughs at kings and those who aren’t kings,

  And feels sorry when he hears about wars,

  And about commerce, and about ships

  That are finally just smoke hovering over the high seas.

  For he knows that all of this lacks the truth

  Which is in a flower when it flowers

  And with the sunlight when it dapples

  The hills and valleys

  Or makes our eyes smart before whitewashed walls.

  Then he falls asleep and I put him to bed.

  I carry him in my arms into the house

  And lay him down, removing his clothes

  Slowly and as if following a very pure

  And maternal ritual until he’s naked.

  He sleeps inside my soul

  And sometimes wakes up in the night

  And plays with my dreams.

  He flips some of them over in the air,

  Piles some on top of others,

  And claps his hands all by himself,

  Smiling at my slumber.

  When I die, my son,

  Let me be the child, the little one.

  Pick me up in your arms

  And carry me into your house.

  Undress my tired and human self

  And tuck me into your bed.

  If I wake up, tell me stories

  So that I’ll fall back asleep.

  And give me your dreams to play with

  Until the dawning of that day

  You know will dawn.

  This is the story of my little boy Jesus,

  And is there any good reason

  Why it shouldn’t be truer

  Than everything philosophers think

  And all that religions teach?

  IX

  I’m a keeper of sheep.

  The sheep are my thoughts

  And each thought a sensation.

  I think with my eyes and my ears

  And with my hands and feet

  And with my nose and mouth.

  To think a flower is to see and smell it,

  And to eat a fruit is to know its meaning.

  That is why on a hot day

  When I enjoy it so much I feel sad,

  And I lie down in the grass

  And close my warm eyes,

  Then I feel my whole body lying down in reality,

  I know the truth, and I’m happy.

  XIII

  Lightly, lightly, very lightly

  A very light wind passes,

  And it goes away just as lightly,

  And I don’t know what I’m thinking,

  Nor do I wish to know.

  XIV

  I don’t worry about rhyme. Two trees,

  One next to the other, are rarely identical.

  I think and write the way flowers have color,

  But how I express myself is less perfect,

  For I lack the divine simplicity

  Of being only my outer self.

  I look and I am moved,

  I am moved the way water flows when the ground slopes,

  And my poetry is natural like the stirring of the wind . . .

  7 MARCH 1914

  XVI

  If only my life were an oxcart

  That creaks down the road in the morning,

  Very early, and returns by the same road

  To where it came from in the evening . . .

  I wouldn’t have to have hopes, just wheels . . .

  My old age wouldn’t have wrinkles or white hair . . .

  When I was of no more use, my wheels would be removed

  And I’d end up at the bottom of a ditch, broken and

  overturned.

  Or I’d be made into something different

  And I wouldn’t know what I’d been made into . . .

  But I’m not an oxcart, I’m different.

  But exactly how I’m different no one would ever tell me.

  4 MARCH 1914

  XVII

  Salad

  What a medley of Nature fills my plate!

  My sisters the plants,

  The companions of springs, the saints

  No one prays to . . .

  And they’re cut and brought to our table,

  And in the hotels the noisy guests

  Arrive with their strapped-up blankets

  And casually order “Salad,”

  Without thinking that they’re requiring Mother Earth

  To give her freshness and her first-born children,

  Her very first green words,

  The first living and gleaming things

  That Noah saw

  When the waters su
bsided and the hilltops emerged

  All drenched and green,

  And in the sky where the dove appeared

  The rainbow started to fade . . .

  7 MARCH 1914

  XXI

  If I could sink my teeth into the whole earth

  And actually taste it,

  I’d be happier for a moment . . .

  But I don’t always want to be happy.

  To be unhappy now and then

  Is part of being natural.

  Not all days are sunny,

  And when rain is scarce, we pray for it.

  And so I take unhappiness with happiness

  Naturally, just as I don’t marvel

  That there are mountains and plains

  And that there are rocks and grass . . .

  What matters is to be natural and calm

  In happiness and in unhappiness,

  To feel as if feeling were seeing,

  To think as if thinking were walking,

  And to remember, when death comes, that each day dies,

  And the sunset is beautiful, and so is the night that

  remains . . .

  That’s how it is and how I want it to be . . .

  7 MARCH 1914