F E R N A N D O   P E S S O A
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BEYOND ANOTHER OCEAN
NOTES BY C. PACHECO

       To the memory of Alberto Caeiro       

 

Translated by Chris Daniels

In a fevered feeling of being beyond another ocean
There were positions of a living more clear and limpid
And apparitions of a city of beings
Not unreal but livid with impossibility, sacred in purity and in nudity
I was the gateway to this null vision and the feelings were only the desire to have them
The notion of things beside themselves, each with their own inwardness
All were living in the life of remnants
And the mode of feeling was in the mode of living
But the form of those faces had the placidity of dew
Their nudity was a silence of forms without means of being
And there was wonder at all reality being only this
But life was life and it was only life

Often my thought works in silence
As smoothly as a greased machine moves without a sound
I feel good when it so moves and I immobilize
So as not to break the equilibrium that allows this to occur in me
I foresee that it is in these moments that my thought is clear
But I do not hear it and it works stealthily and in silence
Like a greased machine driven by a belt
And I can hear nothing but the serene sliding of the parts at work
Sometimes I recall that all other persons must feel the way I do
But they say it gives them a headache or causes dizziness
This recollection came to me as could any other
As for example the recollection that people do not feel the sliding
And they do not think what they do not feel

In this old hall where panoplies of gray armor
Form an armature supporting signs of other ages
My materialized gaze wanders and pulls out from hiding in suits of armors
That secret of soul that causes my living
If I fix upon the panoply my mortified gaze which desires not to see
All the ferric structure of this armature that I do not know why I foresee
Takes possession of my sensing of it like a bolt of lucidity
There is sound in the equal state of two helmets that notice me
The shadow of the lances of being clearly marks the indecisiveness of words
Distichs of uncertainty dance incessantly above me
I hear the coronations of heroes who will come to celebrate me
And hovering over this addiction to sensing I find myself in the same spasms
Of the same gray dust on the arms upon which there are signs of other ages

 

 

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