Literature is the Most Agreeable Way of Ignoring Life (Fernando Pessoa)

 

 

In cities of steel

I let the bluest sea

Bathe the moon

And keep me free

 

In brown eyes

I drowned

And let time snore a nap

Away from old dreams

 

Near a wall of stones

The sea became night

As quiet as emotion

Is to rhythm and flux

 

In cities of steel

I learned to walk alone

Like a line from a poem

Once lost to the poet

 

But enchanted

To stay unfound

 

March 26, 2023

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2023

 

 

 

 

PS/ A friend and colleague from Portugal sent me a new book, published in Yerevan, Armenia, where Fernando Pessoa’s select poems are translated into Armenian. It was a unique experience to read the poems I knew in my native tongue. As with all translations, especially of poems, the original feel, sound and meaning would change, but universal emotions do not get obscured. Rather, they acquire a new meaning, and become a new message.

Through the pages of this new book, Pessoa’s Messagem made me think of lines he had not written. Perhaps of lines I had not written, neither.