Fernando Pessoa - The Tobacco Shop
The Tobacco Shop I’m nothing. I’ll always be nothing. I can’t want to be something. But I have in me all the dreams of the world. Windows of my room, The room of one of the world’s millions nobody knows (And if they knew me, what would they know?), You open onto the mystery of a street continually crossed by people, A street inaccessible to any and every thought, Real, impossibly real, certain, unknowingly certain, With the mystery of things beneath the stones and beings, With death making the walls damp and the hair of men white, With Destiny driving the wagon of everything down the road of nothing. Today I’m defeated, as if I’d learned the truth. Today I’m lucid, as if I were about to die And had no greater kinship with things Than to say farewell, this building and this side of the street becoming A row of train cars, with the whistle for departure Blowing in my head And my nerves jolting and bones creaking as we pull out. Today I’m bewildered, like a man who wondered and discovered...