OPIARY
OPIARY
Life tastes to me like golden tobacco.
I have never done anything but smoke life.
After all of what use was it to me to have
Gone to the East and seen India and China?
The earth is similar and little
And there is only one way of living.
I pretended to study engineering.
I lived in Scotland. I visited Ireland.
My heart is a poor grandmother who goes about
Begging at the doors of Joy.
I am unfortunate by primogeniture.
The gipsies stole my luck.
Perhaps I shall not even find near death
A place to shelter me from my cold.
And I was a child like other people.
I was born in a Portuguese province,
And have met English people
Who say I speak English perfectly.
Pessoa Inédito. Fernando Pessoa. (Orientação, coordenação e prefácio de Teresa Rita Lopes). Lisboa: Livros Horizonte, 1993.
- 88.1ª publ.: Poemas de Álvaro de Campos. Fernando Pessoa. (Edição Crítica de Cleonice Berardinelli.) Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda, 1990.