[BNP/E3, 49A3 – 2]

Indefinite space is by co-substance night;

Light is but islands in that shoreless sea;

And yet our thoughts holds night lesser than light

In what is calls worth, whatso’er that be.

     The world is hushed: sound is but stars in it;

And dead: life is dead lakes in a dead waste;

Therefore when night, silence and no-life hit

Our sense, it doth infinity tip-taste.

     So now when the great city’s moonless sleep

Awakes me to a dreading sense of being

Close upon knowledge, an intuition deep

Comes, that we might reap truth at one soul-seeing

     Could we put off us the sense-garment grown

     Of having light and sound and living known.

11/IV/1912

Fernando Pessoa