I Have More Souls Than One

by Fernando Pessoa

At times, on days of flawless and exact light, When things have all the reality they can have, I stop and ask myself Why even I attribute Beauty to things.

I lived like mad. I loved things without any sentimentality. I never had a desire I could not fulfil, because I never went blind. Even hearing was to me never more than an accompaniment of seeing. I understood that things are real and all different from each other;

To be great, be entire: of what’s yours nothing Exaggerate or exclude. Be whole in each thing. Put all that you are Into the least you do.

Legion live in us; I think or feel and don’t know Who it is thinking, feeling. I am merely the place Where thinking or feeling is. I have more souls than one. There are more ‘I’s than myself. And still I exist Indifferent to all. I silence them: I speak.

I am nothing. Never shall be anything. Cannot will to be anything. This apart, I have in me all the dreams of the world.

metaphysics is a consequence of feeling out of sorts.

Give me some more wine, because life is nothing.