Alberto Caeiro, The Keeper Of Sheep Quotes

There’s enough metaphysics in not thinking about anything.

That lady has a piano.It’s nice, but it’s not the running of riversOr the murmuring trees make ..Who needs a piano?It’s better to have earsAnd love Nature.

It’s stranger than every strangenessAnd the dreams of all the poetsAnd the thoughts of all the philosophers, That things are really what they seem to beAnd there’s nothing to understand.

Lightly, lightly, very lightly, A wind passes very lightlyAnd goes away, always very lightly.And I don’t know what I thinkAnd I don’t want to know.

Yes, this is what my senses alone have learned:—Things don’t have significance: they only have existence.Things are the only hidden meaning of things.

If they want me to have mysticism, okay, I’ve got it.I’m a mystic, but only in my body, My soul is simple and doesn’t think.

The river of my village doesn’t make you think about anything.When you’re at its bank you’re only at its bank.

If I talk about her like she’s a beingIt’s because talking about her I need to use the language of menWhich gives personality to things, And imposes a name on things.

Pensar incomoda como andar à chuvaQuando o vento cresce e parece que chove mais.

Things don’t have significance: they only have existence.Things are the only hidden meaning of things.

All beings exist and nothing elseAnd that’s why they’re called beings

Even so, I’m somebody.I’m the Discoverer of Nature.I’m the Argonaut of true sensations.I bring a new Universe to the UniverseBecause I bring the Universe to itself.

A row of trees far away, there on the hillside.But what is it, a row of trees? It’s just trees.Row and the plural trees aren’t things, they’re names.

I pass and I stay, like the Universe.

Also at times, on the surface of streams, Water?bubbles formAnd grow and burstAnd have no meaning at allExcept that they’re water?bubblesGrowing and bursting.

I don’t always feel what I know I should feel.My thought crosses the river I swim very slowlyBecause the suit men made it wear weighs it down.

The man stopped talking and was looking at the sunset.But what does someone who hates and loves want with a sunset?