GREAT ARE THE DESERTS ...

Great are the deserts, and everything is desert.
A few tons of rock with bricks on top
Won't disguise the ground, the very ground that everything is.
Great are the deserts, and the souls deserted and great—
Deserted because they're crossed only by themselves,
Great because from there you see everything,
and everything's dead.

Great are the deserts, my soul!
Great are the deserts.

I never got a ticket for life.
I chose the wrong door of feeling.
There wasn't a wish or a chance I didn't lose.
Today there's nothing left to me, the night before the trip,
With my open suitcase still waiting to be packed,
As I sit on the chair with the pile of shirts that won't fit in,
Today there's nothing left (aside from the discomfort
of sitting here)
But knowing this:
Great are the deserts, and everything is desert.
Great is life, and life's not worth the trouble.

I'll pack the suitcase better with an eye toward
thinking of packing
Than I would by packing it with my fake hands (I believe I've made myself clear).
I light a cigarette to put off the trip,
To put off all trips,
To put off the whole universe.

Come back tomorrow, reality!
That's enough for today, folks!
Come back later, absolute present!
It's better not to have to be like this.

Buy chocolates for the child I replaced by mistake,
And take off the wrapper, because tomorrow is forever.
But I have to pack the suitcase,
I definitely have to pack the suitcase,
The suitcase.
I can't take my shirts in a hypothesis and my suitcase in reason.
Yes, all my life I've needed to pack the suitcase.
But also, all my life, I've been sitting in the corner
on a pile of shirts,
Chewing—like a bull who never became Apis—destiny's cud.
I have to pack the suitcase of being.
I must exist packing suitcases.
My cigarette ash falls on the top shirt of the mountain.
I glance at it and verify: I am asleep.
I only know that I have to pack the suitcase,
And that the deserts are great and all is desert,
And some parable about this, but I already forgot it.

Suddenly I rise like all Caesars.
Once and for all, I'm going to pack the suitcase.
Damn it, I'll pack it and close it;
I'll see it taken out of here;
I'll exist independently of it.

Great are the deserts and everything is desert—
Unless, of course, I'm mistaken.

Poor human soul with the only oasis in the desert next door!

It's better to pack the suitcase.
The end.

(4/9/1930)

- Álvaro de Campos -
(heteronym of Fernando Pessoa)
Lisboa, 1888 - 1935