Saturday, September 4, 2010

Today I read almost two pages by fernando pessoa

"Today I read almost two pages
In a book by mysical poet
And I laughed like someone who'd cried a lot.

Mystical poets are sick philosophers
And philosophers are crazy.

Mystical poets say plowers feel
And they say stones have a soul
And they say rivers have ecstasies in the moonlight.

But flowers wouldn't be flowers if they felt,
They'd be people;
And if stones had a soul, they'd be living things, they wouldn't be stones;
And if rivers had ecstasies in teh moonlight,
Rivers would be sick people.

You need to not know what flowers and stones and rivers are
To talk about ther feelings.

Talking about the soul of stones, of flowers, of rivers,
Is talking about yourself and your false thoughts.
Thank God stones are only stones,
And rivers are nothing but rivers,
And flowers are just flowers.

Me, I write the prose of my poems
And I'm at peace,
Because I know I comprehend Nature on the outside;
And I don't comprehend Nature on the inside
Because Nature doesn't have an inside;
If she did she wouldn't be Nature."

-fernando pessoa

Why do we attach thoughts and feelings to people or objects when we do not know what is on the inside? I am all about metaphors, but there has got to be some intrinsic characteristic about an object to be able to compare something to. You should not say that she is happy like a flower. Flowers are not happy. They are just flowers. Maybe they make you happy but please don't get your own emotions confused with a flower's.

I have realized that I do the same type thing with people. I see some qualities or characteristics about a person and then attach 10 times the amount of my own made-up qualities. The scary thing is that I think that I am right. I have a hard time separating what I want someone to be like and what they are really like. When my assumptions are disproved, I am shocked and put off. But its not the person's fault when they are not what I expected them to be. Its my fault. Maybe I am a sick metaphysical philosopher.

2 comments:

  1. P.S. I really love metaphysical poetry. A lot of it anyway. But that is because it does not randomly associate meaning. A geometer's compass happens to be a beautiful and logical metaphor for love.

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  2. Pessoa cannot be labelled as any name . He is just a poet with a warm heart .

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