LISBON REVISITED (1926)

Nothing connects me to nothing.

I want dozens of things at the same time.

Anguished, as if in hunger for flesh,

I long for something

though I know not what is –

decidedly I am unsure…

Turbulent in sleep and restless in dream, sleeping fitfully, dreaming in halves.

All doors denied, both real and imagined.

All curtains drawn tight, all speculations hidden from view.

I found the lane but not the door whose number I’d been given.

I woke up to the same life, a life I had slept.

Even the armies of my dreams conceded defeat.

Even my dreams believed themselves to be what they were not.

Even a life desired would give me no rest – even that life…

My understanding is inconstant, lacking in focus;

I write and rewrite through lapses of fatigue;

and when my boredom itself begins to get bored

it drags me off to the beach.

– Álvaro de Campos by Fernando Pessoa*

Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) one of Portugal’s and world’s greatest writers and poets of all times, had many heteronyms (Álvaro de Campos one of them) of which expressed the complexity of his inner character and independent thought. A literary chameleon. A wanderer.