The Keeper of Sheep
[ 23 July 1930 ]
56
Now that I feel love
I'm interested in things that have a scent.
I never used to be interested in the fact that a flower had scent.
Now I experience the scent of flowers as if life were utterly new.
I know perfectly well that they always had a scent, just as I knew that I existed.
These are things one knows out of habit.
But now I know this from the deep in-breath that comes from way back in my head.
Today the flowers taste good to me on a palate that can also smell.
Sometimes when I wake now, smell comes before sight.
Every day I wake full of joy and sorrow.
I used to wake feeling nothing at all; I simply woke.
I feel joy and sorrow because I lose what I dream
But can still inhabit the reality where my dreams live.
I don't know what to do with my sensations,
I don't know what to do on my own.
I want her to say something, anything, so that I can wake again.
_________________
Fernando Pessoa
The Complete Works of Alberto Caeiro
translated from the Portuquese by
Margaret Jull Costa & Patricio Ferrari
New Directions, 2020
