One way or another,
The moment permitting,
Able to say what I think at times,
And otherwise saying it poorly and jumbled,
I keep writing my poems without wanting to,
As if writing weren't something made up of gestures,
As if writing were something that happened to me
Like the sun outside shining on me.

I try saying what I feel
Without thinking about what I feel.
I try fitting words to the idea
Without going down a corridor
Of thought to find words.

I don't always succeed in feeling what I know I should feel.
My thought swims the river only quite slowly,
Heavily burdened by clothes men have made it wear.
I try divesting myself of what I have learned,
I try forgetting the mode of remembering they taught me,
And scrap off the ink they used to paint my senses,
Unpacking my true emotions,
Unwrapping myself, and being myself, not Alberto Caeiro,
Being a human animal that nature produced.

So I write, wanting to feel nature, not even like a man,
But one who feels nature, nothing more.
So I write, often well, often not,
Now hitting the nail on the head, and now not,
Falling down here, picking myself up there,
Yet always going ahead on my own like a pigheaded blind man.