Beyond Another Ocean
Notes by C. Pacheco

To the memory of Alberto Caeiro

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

When I enter a great naked hall at the hour of twilight
And that everything is silence it has for me the structure of a soul
It is vague and dusty and my steps echo strangely
Like those which echo in my soul when I walk
Through their sad windows, the sleeping light enters from without
And projects shadows and penumbras on the dark wall ahead
A great empty hall is a silent soul
And air currents that stir dust are thoughts

A flock of ewes is a sad thing
Because we shouldn’t be able to associate it with other ideas that are not sad
And because it is so and only because it is so because it is the truth
That we should associate sad ideas with a flock of ewes
It is for this reason and only for this reason that ewes are sad in fact

I steal for pleasure when I am given an object of value
And I give in return a few bits of metal. This idea is neither common nor banal
For I face it differently and there is no relation between a bit of metal and another object
If I were to buy tin and paid with lettuce I would be arrested
I used to like hearing anyone expose and explain
How one can stop thinking that one thinks that anything is done
So as to lose the fear I have of some day knowing that
My thinking about things and thinking are nothing but a material and perfect thing

The position of a body is not unimportant to its equilibrium
And the sphere is not a body because it has no form
If it is so and if we all hear a sound in any position
I infer that it must not be a body
But those who know by intuition that a sound is not a body
Were not following my reasoning and thus this notion is of no use to them
When I remember that there are persons who play with words in displays of wit
And they laugh about it and tell personal stories about their own lives
So to brighten their spirits and that they find circus clowns amusing
And that they become annoyed when a drop of oil falls on their new suits
I am glad that there are so many things I do not understand
In the art of each worker I see a whole generation at labor
And therefore I do not understand any craft and only see that generation
The worker does not see anything of a generation in his craft
And therefore he is a worker and knows his craft

My physique often causes a deep depression in me
I know that I am a thing and because I am no different from any other thing
I know that other things must be like me and have to think that I am a common thing
And thus if it is so then I do not really think but only believe I think
And this my way of conditioning myself is good and it comforts me

I love alamedas full of curving shadowy trees
And walking through wide alamedas delightful to my gaze
Alamedas my gaze fashions without my knowing how
They are doors opening out into my incoherent being
And it is always alamedas I feel when the shock of so being makes me known

Often I take shelter from my own sensations and inclinations
And then they vary and are in accord with those of others
But I do not feel them and also I do not know that I am fooling myself

Feeling poetry is the supposed way for one to live
I do not feel poetry not because I do not know what it is
But because I cannot live supposedly
And if I managed it I would have to follow another way of conditioning myself
The condition of poetry is not to know how it is one senses it
There are beautiful things that are beautiful in themselves
But the inner beauty of feelings mirrors itself in things
And if they are beautiful we do not feel them

In the sequence of steps I cannot see more than the sequence of steps
And they follow as if I saw them really following each other
By the fact of them being so equal to each other
And since there is no sequence of steps that is not
I see no need to illude ourselves about the clear meaning of things
Otherwise we would have to believe that an inanimate body feels and sees differently from us
And by being too admissible this notion would be uncomfortable and futile

If we are able to cease movement and speech when we think
Is it necessary to suppose that things do not think
If this manner of seeing them is incoherent and easy on the wit?
We ought to suppose and this is the true way
That we think by the fact of our being able to do so without moving or speaking
As do inanimate things

When I feel isolated the need to be any person arises
And eddies around me in oscillating spirals
This way of saying is not figurative
And I know that it eddies around me like a moth around a light
In it I see symptoms of weariness and am horrified when I think it will fall
But as this never quite succeeds, it happens at times when I am isolated

There are those who are affected by scratchings on the walls
And others who are not affected
But scratchings on walls are always the same
And the difference comes from the persons. But if there is a difference within this sensing
There will have to be personal difference in the sensing of other things
And when all think the same of a thing it is because it is different for each one

Memory is the faculty by which we know that we must live
And therefore amnesiacs cannot know that they live
But like me they are unhappy and I know that I am living and that I must live
An object that is attained, a fear one has
Are all manners of being alive for others
I would like to live or to be within myself as spaces are or live

After eating so many persons sit in rocking chairs
They arrange themselves on the cushions close their eyes and allow themselves to live
There is no struggle between living and the will not to live
Or else — and this is horrid to me — if there really is a struggle
They kill themselves with a pistol shot having first written letters
To abandon oneself to living is as absurd as speaking in secret

Circus performers are superior to me
Because they know how to leap about and make deadly moves on horseback
And they leap about only for the sake of leaping about
And if I leapt about I would have to know why I leapt about
And not leaping about would sadden me
They are not able to say how it is they leap about
But they leap as only they know how to leap
And never ask themselves if they really leap about
Because myself, when I see something
I do not know if it has happened or not nor can I know it
I know only that for me it is as if it happens because I see it
But I cannot know if I see things that would not happen
And if I would see them I would also be able to suppose that they had taken place

A bird is always beautiful because it is a bird
And birds are always beautiful
But a featherless bird is as ugly as a toad
And a mound of feathers is not beautiful
I do not know how to induce anything from this fact so bare in itself
And I feel that within it there must reside some great truth

What I think at one point can never be the same as what I think at another
And hence I live so others know they live

Sometimes at the foot of a wall I see a mason working
And his mode of existing and being able to be seen is always different from what I believe
He works and there is a directed incitement moving his arms
How does it happen that he is working by a will he has for it
And neither do I work nor do I have the will to do so
Nor could I have an understanding of that possibility?
He knows nothing of these truths and yet surely he is no more happy than I
Treading dry leaves on paths of other parks
Sometimes I dream that I exist for myself and that I have to live
But the seeing myself as illusion never ends
For in the end I see myself on the paths of this park
Treading dry leaves that listen back at me
If at least I could hear the dry leaves crackle
Without it being me who treads on them or them seeing me
But the dry leaves whirl around and I have to tread on them
If only like all people I had someone on this journey

A masterpiece is nothing more than a piece of work
And therefore any piece of work is a masterpiece
If this reasoning seems false then my desire for its truth
Is not false and that is enough for the uses of my thinking

What matter that an idea is obscure if it is an idea
And one idea cannot be less lovely than another
For there can be no difference between two ideas
And it is so because I see that it must be so
A dreaming brain is the same as one that thinks
And dreams cannot be incoherent because they are nothing but thoughts
Like any others. If I see someone looking at me
I begin to think like all people without meaning to
And this is just as painful as if my soul were branded by a red-hot iron
But how can I know if it is painful to brand the soul with a red-hot iron
If red-hot iron is an idea that I do not comprehend

I am moved by the wrong turn taken by my virtues
It afflicts my conscience when I sense that I can note their absence if I wish
I would like it if the virtues that fulfill me were delectable
But only to be able to possess them and for those virtues to be mine
There are persons who say that they feel their hearts torn to pieces
But they do not so much as glimpse the good
In feeling our hearts being torn to pieces
This is something hardly felt
But it is not the reason why it would be happiness to feel the heart torn to pieces

In a shadowed noble hall in which there are azulejos
In which blue azulejos color the walls
And the floor is dark and tinted and covered with jute runners
At times I enter all too coherent
I am within that hall like any person
But the ceiling is concave and the doors are off the mark
The sadness of stained glass in transoms over doors
Is an uneven sadness made of silence
Through reticulated windows amidst light when it is day,
That numbs the glass in the transoms and gathers mounds of blackness in recesses
At times windy chill runs through broad corridors
But there is an odor of old cracked varnishes in the corners of halls
And everything aches in this manor-house of antiques

Sometimes I become happy for a moment to think that I will die
And be buried in a coffin made of resinous wood
My body surely melt into shocking liquids
My features come undone in varicolored rot
And a ridiculous skull come gradually to light down there
So dirty and tired and blinking away



•—•—•—•—•

AS Bessa helped immeasurably with this translation. I have taken many of his suggestions. Any remaining errors are my own. In the original Portuguese, this poem is almost devoid of punctuation. I have followed the original, but have added a comma in places where I felt it to be necessary.

In the Nova Aguilar (Brasil) single-volume edition of Pessoa’s complete poetry (which is quite incomplete!), the title of this poem is “ Para Além Doutro Oceano de C[oelho] Pacheco”: “Beyond Another Ocean by C[oelho] Pacheco”.

This poem was meant to appear in the third issue of the journal Orpheu , the literary organ of Pessoa and his circle. The issue was destroyed by censors. As far as I know, there is no manuscript record of this poem. The original exists only in a set of proofs. I have referred to a facsimile of those proofs.

Among Pessoa’s acquaintances was one J. Coelho Pacheco, a businessman who loved poetry and probably wrote poetry. He may have written this poem; indeed, some critics believe that he did; thus, C. Pacheco cannot be a heteronym. A heteronym is a fictional writer that may or may not reflect or refract some aspect or aspects of the personality and desires of the inventing writer, who is not trying very hard, if at all, to hide the fact that the heteronym is fictive. Be that as it may, the dedicatee is one of Pessoa’s most celebrated heteronyms.

Pacheco is a very common surname, and “C” could stand for “Cristina” or “Claudio”, or any number of other common Portuguese given names. While I do not know the truth of the matter, I feel that any complication of Fernando Pessoa’s contradictory game of masks — his “drama in people” — is extremely desirable.