Poem for September

---

 

I Am Tired

 

I am tired, that is clear,

Because, at a certain stage, people have to be tired.

Of what I am tired, I don’t know:

It would not serve me at all to know

Since the tiredness stays just the same.

The wound hurts as it hurts

And not in function of the cause that produced it.

Yes, I am tired,

And ever so slightly smiling

At the tiredness being only this –

In the body a wish for sleep,

In the soul a desire for not thinking

And, to crown all, a luminous transparency

Of the retrospective understanding…

And the one luxury of not now having hopes?

I am intelligent: that’s all.

I have seen much and understood much of what I

have seen.

And there is a certain pleasure even in the tiredness

this brings us,

That in the end the head does still serve for

something.

 

Alvaro De Campos (Fernando Pessoa) (1888 – 1935)

from Fernando Pessoa: Selected Poems (Penguin: 1982) Translated by Jonathan Griffin