A few days ago, I had a walk alongside the river Tagus with my French friend Caroline. A bicycle lane is being built there. There are some artists involved in the project, as painted along the lane there are a few lines from a poem.
The author of such poem is Alberto Caeiro (a Fernando Pessoa’s heteronym as you know). Alberto Caeiro is the master, in a zennish way, of Álvaro de Campos (Fernando Pessoa), Ricardo Reis (Fernando Pessoa), and Fernando Pessoa (Fernando Pessoa).
Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) is said to be the four best 20th century Portuguese poets. And I agree.
So here it is, Alberto Caeiro’s chapter XX of his only poem “O Guardador de Rebanhos” (“The Keeper of Sheep,” according to some English translations), and my apologies if it doesn’t make any sense, for I was the one who transmorphfigurelated it. *
* * *
The Tagus is more beautiful than the river that runs through my village,
But the Tagus isn’t more beautiful than the river that runs through my village
Because the Tagus isn’t the river that runs through my village.
Large ships cruise the Tagus,
And across it also sails,
For those able to see in everything what isn’t there,
The memory of carracks.
The Tagus runs down from Spain
And the Tagus merges into the sea in Portugal.
Everyone knows that.
But only a few know which is the river of my village.
And to where it goes
And from where it comes.
And because of that, as it belongs to fewer people,
The river of my village is more free and longer.
Through the Tagus one reaches the World.
Beyond the Tagus lies America
And the fortune of those who find it. **
No one ever thought about what lies beyond
The river of my village.
The river of my village doesn’t make one think about anything.
Those who are near it are only near it. ***
_________________________
* "The translator is a traitor."
** Of those who find the fortune or of those who find America? Ambiguity is such a playful device.
*** There’s a double meaning in the original: “He who is near it is alone near it.”
