This

They say I fake or lie

In everything I write

No, it’s simply that

With me imagination

Feeds — I don’t use

The heart.

All I dream or go through

All I fail or lose out

On, is like a terrace

Facing something else

Again, and that’s the lovely

Thing.

It’s why I write

steeped in things not readily

At hand– free of emotions,

Serious about what isn’t,

Feelings?  That’s the readers

Lot!

 I’m so full of feeling

I’m so full of feeling

I can easily believe

I must be sentimental.

But when I mull this over,

I see it’s all in thought,

I felt nothing whatever.

All of us alive spend

One life in living it,

Another, thinking it.

And the only life we have

Is split between

The true one and the false.

But which is true

And which is false,

No one can explain.

And as we go on living,

The life we spend’s the one

That’s doomed to thinking.

(1933)

by Fernando Pessoa 

Translated from Portuguese by Edwin Honig and Susan M. Brown