[BNP/E3, 31A – 75-77]
Summerland
One day, Time having ceased,
Our lives shall meet again,
From Place and Name released.
Only that shall remain
Of each of us that may
Seem natural to that Day.
There we will newly love,
Wondering at the old mood
With which love did us move,
When pain and solitude
Were what each soul had got
For its contingent lot.
Now, heaven being between us
And touch a real thing,
x The garment[1] luminous
Of our true lives will bring
God into our love like breath.
Nowhere will there be death.
The need to suffer and sigh,
The inevitable cares,
The awaiting and the cry
That goes from joy to tears -
These have no need to be
In love's eternity.
The hours shall make our love
Grow younger, not more old.
Some trick of time shall move
Wont even to truer gold.
Regret shall not be aught
Possible there to thought.
That region light‑suspended
Under truer blue skies
Shall let our souls feel blended,
Yet be true unities.
Nought shall have power to fret
Our hearts to tire of it.
A golden land where God
Stayed a Day of His Time,
Not as the world, where not
A moment did he abide;
x A summerland of kisses,
Tropic of tendernessess.[2]
[76r]
O que tem o troço à volta fui eu que escrevi
Summerland – 2.
My heart, that thinks of this,
Pines, for it is nowhere.
And she that meets my bliss
With her new old love there -
She is unreal as all
That to this verse I call.
Yet who knows? Perhaps this
Is not wishing, but seeing.
Perhaps this love, this bliss,
This conscious glad not‑being
Is some reality
Through fancy seen by me.
Perhaps it casts a spell[3]
From where it[4] can be found.
What is impossible?
Where is God's bourne and bound?
Why, if I dream this, may
Not this be mine one day?
Who knows what our dreams are?
Who but God gives and makes?
Perhaps life doth but mar
The immediate truth that takes
Its beauty from being dreamed.
Nothing hath e’er but[5] seemed.
Somewhere where God is nearer
These things are een now true.
Oh, let me be no fearer
That this may not be so!
All is more strange than that
Small glimpse of it we get.
Mine eyes are wild with joy
Because I have these thoughts.
They cannot tire nor cloy
Because God ever allots
To each high thing the power
To |weigh not on its| hour.
My flower garden is
Full of new flowers now.
My lips are kissed by bliss
Because I know not how.
My heart fails and I swim
Within a luminous rim.
[77r]
Summerland – 3
A halo of hope comes round
My soul. I am that child
That cries: Lo! I have found
This flower strange and wild.
The unknown flower I have
Grew on my dead dreams' grave.
A trembling sense of being
More than my sense[6] can hold,
A bird of feeling seeing
The great, earth‑hidden gold
Of the approaching dawn,
A breath, a light, a swoon,
A presence interwoven
With rays of other light,
A spell, a power untroven
Of my more clear delight,
I faint, I fade, I seem
Myself to be my dream.
And if this be not so,
Oh, God, make it now be!
Let me not find more woe
Because I so dreamed Thee!
Let aught for which I pine
x Merit the mood divine.
Let this resemble heaven
And be my home for e'er,
Even if for e'er mean even
x But one hour frail and fair.
An hour in God shall be
Enough eternity.
Fernando Pessoa
[1] garment /texture\ /texture\
[2] A summerland of kisses, /Yet where his passing left\
Tropic of tendernessess. /The sense of aught bereft\
[3] casts a spell /casts a spell\
[4] From /From\ where it /she\ /she\
[5] but /merely\/merely\
[6] sense /soul\
