“The Scaffold”
by Fernando Pessoa
Trans. Richard Zenith
The time I’ve spent dreaming—
Years and years of my life!
Ah, how much of my past
Was only the false life
Of a future I imagined!
Here on the bank of the river
I grow calm for no reason.
Its empty flowing mirrors,
Cold and anonymous,
The life I’ve lived in vain.
How little hope ever attains!
What longing is worth the wait?
Any child’s ball
Rises higher than my hope,
Rolls farther than my longing.
Waves of the river, so slight
That you aren’t even waves,
The hours, days and years
Pass quickly—mere grass or snow
Which die by the same sun.
I spent all I didn’t have.
I’m older than I am.
The illusion that kept me going
Was a queen only on stage:
Once undressed, her reign was over.
Soft sound of these slow waters
Aching for shores you’ve passed,
How drowsy are the memories
Of misty hopes! What dreams
All dreaming and life amount to!
What did I make of my life?
I found myself when already lost.
Impatient, I let myself be,
As I might let a lunatic go on
Believing what I’d proved was wrong.
Dead sound of these gentle waters
That flow because they must,
Take not only my memories
But also my dead hopes—
Dead, because they must die.
I’m already my future corpse.
Only a dream links me to myself—
The hazy and belated dream
Of what I should have been—a wall
Around my abandoned garden.
Take me, passing waves,
To the oblivion of the sea!
Bequeath me to what I won’t be—
I, who raised a scaffold
Around the house I never built.
29 August 1924
