The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa by Fernando Pessoa

Since he had no way of returning to his homeland, and since remembering it made him suffer, he dreamed up a homeland he’d never had, and he made that other homeland his: another kind of country with other kinds of landscapes, and different people, who had a different way of walking down the street and leaning out their windows. Hour by hour he built that false homeland in his dreams, and he dreamed continuously—by day in the scant shade of the tall palms, whose spiky shadows stood out on the warm, sandy ground, and by night on the beach, where he lay on his back and didn’t notice the stars.
     
FIRST WATCHER If only a tree had dappled my outstretched hands with the shadow of a dream like that! ...
     
THIRD WATCHER Let her speak. Don’t interrupt. She knows words that mermaids taught her ... I’m falling asleep in order to hear her ... Go on, sister, go on ... My heart aches because I wasn’t you when you dreamed at the seashore ...
     
SECOND WATCHER For years and years, day after day, the mariner built his new homeland in a never-ending dream ... Every day he placed a dreamed stone on that impossible edifice ... Soon he had a country he’d crossed and recrossed countless times. He remembered having already spent thousands of hours along its coastline. He knew the usual color of twilight on a certain northern bay, and how soothing it was to enter—late at night, with his soul basking in the murmur of the water cut by the ship’s prow—a large southern port where he had spent, perhaps happily, his imaginary youth ...
     
    (pause)
     
FIRST WATCHER Why have you quit speaking, sister?
     
SECOND WATCHER It’s better not to talk too much ... Life is always watching us... Every hour is a mother to our dreams, but we mustn’t know this ... When I talk too much, I become separated from myself and start hearing myself speak. This stirs self-pity and makes mefeel my heart so intensely that I end up nearly weeping with desire to hold it in my arms and rock it like a baby ... Look: the horizon is growing lighter ... The day can’t be too far off. Must I tell you more of my dream?
     
FIRST WATCHER Keep telling it, sister, keep on telling it. Don’t stop telling it, and pay no attention to the fact that days dawn. .. The day never dawns for those who lay their head in the lap of dreamed hours... Don’t wring your hands. It makes a sound as of a stealthy snake ... Tell us much, much more about your dream. It’s so true that it makes no sense. The mere thought of hearing you is music to my soul...
     
SECOND WATCHER Yes, I’ll tell you more about it. I myself feel the need to tell it. As I tell it to you, I’m also telling it to myself... Three of us are listening ...
(Suddenly looks at the coffin and shudders.)
Three of us, no ... I don’t know ... I don’t know how many ...
     
THIRD WATCHER Don’t talk like that. Just tell your dream, start telling it again ... Don’t talk about how many can hear ... We never know how many things really live and see and hear ... Go back to your dream ... The mariner. What did the mariner dream of? ...
     
SECOND WATCHER
(in a softer voice, very slowly)
He began by creating landscapes; then he created cities; then he created streets and cross streets, one by one, sculpting them out of the substance of his soul—street by street, neighborhood after neighborhood, out to the sea walls of the wharfs, where he then created the ports... Street by street, and the people who walked them or gazed down at them from their windows ... He began to know some of the people, at first just barely recognizing them, but then becoming familiar with their past lives and their conversations, and he dreamed all this as if it were mere scenery to delight the eyes. .. Then he traveled, with his memory, through the country he’d created ... And thus he created his past... Soon he had another previous life ... In this new homeland he already had a birthplace, places where he’d grown up, and ports from