Incredible the animal that first dreamed of another animal. —Carlos Fuentes

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God sleeps in stone,

breathes in plants,

dreams in animals

and awakens in man.


—Vedic proverb

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Whether we write or speak or do but look 
We are ever unapparent. What we are 
Cannot be transfused into word or book. 
Our soul from us is infinitely far. 
However much we give our thoughts the will 
To be our soul and gesture it abroad, 
Our hearts are incommunicable still. 

In what we show ourselves we are ignored. 
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged 
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming. 
Unto our very selves we are abridged 
When we would utter to our thought our being. 
We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams, 
And each to each other dreams of others’ dreams.

—Fernando Pessoa

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If you are stone, be magnetic;

if a plant, be sensitive;

if you are human, be love.


—Victor Hugo
Les Miserables

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Nothing is known, everything is imagined. Surround yourself with roses. —Fernando Pessoa

 

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God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.

—J.M. Barrie

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Thought has altitude. Thought has velocity. 

Thought has acceleration. Thought has dimension. 

Thought has edges and vertices. 

Thought has a radius and a circumference. 

Thought dances in front of a thoughtless mirror.

—Ahmed Salman

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what has been, is no(thing

 

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The path to heaven lies through heaven,

and all the way to heaven is heaven.

—Catherine of Siena

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The bird has no path; 
where the bird flies is the path.

The fish has no path in water;
wherever it swims is the path.


—The Upanishads 

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Rather the flying bird, leaving no trace
Than the going beast
Marking the earth with his track.

The bird flies by and forgets
(As is only right). The beast
Where he no longer is
(And is therefore no use)
Marks that he was there before
(Which is also no use).

For to remember is to betray
Nature, since the nature of yesterday
Is not nature.
What has been, is nothing.
Remembering
Is failure to see.

Move on, bird, move on, teach me
To move on.


—Fernando Pessoa
Thomas Merton version

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Nothing is known, everything is imagined. Surround yourself with roses. —Fernando Pessoa

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God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.

—J.M. Barrie

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Thought has altitude. Thought has velocity. 

Thought has acceleration. Thought has dimension. 

Thought has edges and vertices. 

Thought has a radius and a circumference. 

Thought dances in front of a thoughtless mirror.

—Ahmed Salman

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the frightful reality of things

  

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Desperation is the raw material of drastic change.

Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.

―William S. Burroughs

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The frightful reality of things
Is my everyday discovery.
Each thing is what it is.
How can I explain to anyone how much
I rejoice over this, and find it enough?

To be whole, it is enough to exist.

I have written quite a number of poems
And may write many more, of course.
Each poem of mine explains it,
Though all my poems are different,
Because each thing that exists is always proclaiming it.

Sometimes I busy myself with watching a stone,
I don’t begin thinking whether it feels.
I don’t force myself to call it my sister,

But I enjoy it because of its being a stone,
I enjoy it because it feels nothing,
I enjoy it because it is not at all related to me.

At times I also hear the wind blow by
And find that merely to hear the wind blow makes
it worth having been born.

I don’t know what others will think who read this;
But I find it must be good because I think it
without effort,
And without the idea of others hearing me think,
Because I think it without thoughts,
Because I say it as my words say it.

Once they called me a materialist poet
And I admired myself because I never thought
That I might be called by any name at all.
I am not even a poet: I see.
If what I write has any value, it is not I who am
valuable.
The value is there, in my verses.
All this has nothing whatever to do with any will
of mine.


—Fernando Pessoa

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the keeper of flocks, excerpt

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Metaphysics?
What metaphysics do these trees have?

That of being green and having crowns and branches
And that of giving fruit at their hours, 
– which is not what makes us think – us, 
who don't know to be aware of them.

But what better metaphysics than theirs,
Which is not knowing why they live
And not knowing they don't know? 


—Fernando Pessoa

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