Translated selection of Odes by Ricardo Reis (heteronym of Fernando Pessoa).
Music:
"Living Kingdom" by Kourosh Dini
"Raga Bhimpalasi" by Boris Moskvitin
both from http://www.magnatune.com
Odes read:
Follow your destiny,
Water your plants,
Love your roses.
The rest is the shadow
Of someone else's trees.
Reality is
Always more or less
Of what we want.
Only ourselves are always
in accordance to our-selves.
Soft is to live alone.
Great and noble is always
To simply live.
Leave the pain on the altars
As an ex-vow to the gods.
Behold life from afar.
Never question it.
There is nothing she can
Tell you. The answer
Lies beyond the gods.
But serenely
Mimic Olimpus
In your heart.
The gods are gods
Because they do not self think.
---
Of the gods I ask only that they grant me
That I ask them nothing. Asking is a yoke
And being happy oppresses
Because it is a certain state.
Neither quiet nor unquiet my calm being
I want to rise high above where men
Have pleasure or pain.
---
To be great, be whole: nothing
Yours exaggerates or excludes.
Be all in each thing. Apply as much as you are
In the least you do.
Thus in each lake the whole moon
Shines, as it highly dwells.
---
Nothing remains of nothing. Nothing are we.
A bit under the sun and by the wind we delay ourselves
Of the irrespirable darkness that would weight upon us
Of the imposed damp soil.
Delayed cadavers that procreate.
Laws made, statues seen, odes completed —
Everything has its own grave. If we, fleshes
To which an intimate sun gives blood, have
A setting west, why not them?
We are tales telling tales, nothing.
---
I want ignored, and calm
By ignored and my own
By calm, filling my days
With wanting nothing more of them.
Those whom riches touch
Gold rashes the skin.
Those on whom fame blows
Their life is but a fog.
To those whom happiness
Is a Sun, night will come.
But to the one that expects naught
Everything that comes is grateful.
---
In ourselves live countless;
If I think or feel, I ignore
The one who thinks or feels.
I am merely the place
Where it is felt and thought.
I have more souls than one.
There are more mes that myself.
I exist however
Indifferent to all.
I make them silent: I speak.
The crossed impulses
Of what I feel or do not feel
Dispute over who I am.
I ignore them. They dictate nothing
To whom I know as myself: I write.
