Take flight, or dive down

“To read is to dream, guided by someone else’s hand.” 

– Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

I’ve returned to writing poems, while my students fly off to fiction starting this week. It feels so satisfying to have shared some of the energy of poetic craft and then to find myself returned to my own energy. Here’s a favorite poem of mine by Pessoa, which reminds me why I keep leaping from high branches into it (and why I sometimes get tired).

I
Whether we write or speak or are but seen
We are ever unapparent. What we are
Cannot be transfused into word or mien.
Our soul from us is infinitely far.
However much we give our thoughts the will
To make our soul with arts of self-show stored,
Our hearts are incommunicable still.
In what we show ourselves we are ignored.
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged
By any skill or thought or trick for seeing.
Unto our very selves we are abridged
When we would utter to our thought our being.
       We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams,
       And each to each other dreams of others' dreams.

[from 35 Sonnets, by Fernando Pessoa, August 1910]

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