The Power Of Words

I love poetry and don’t read it enough and while browsing some second hand books today I came across a book with the simple title ‘Cat Poems’, loving both I naturally picked it up, but expecting it would most likely be many of the same poems I have already, in other collections, many times over; but looking at it slowly once home, I was pleased to find many I had never come across before. I haven’t read them all, but one in particular so far really stood out, it really touched me, moved me and I had never read it before and so I thought maybe others haven’t, so decided I’d share it today, add a touch of beauty to the day in these grim times. I liked it immediately, but having since read it numerous times it has really got under my skin and I keep finding more in it. So take a moment, be still, read it, sit with it and then go back to it, open to it and let it speak to your soul. I just keep going back to it and it joins the collection of poems I always keep inside me.

Magnificat                          

When will this inner night – the universe – end

And I – my soul – have my day?

When will I wake up from being awake?

I don’t know. The sun shines on high

And cannot be looked at.

The stars coldly blink

And cannot be counted.

The heart beats aloofly

And cannot be heard.

When will this drama without theatre

-Or this theatre without drama – end

So that I can go home?

Where? How? When?

O cat staring at me with eyes of life, Who lurks

   in your depths?

It’s Him! It’s him!

Like Joshua he’ll order the sun to stop,

  and I’ll wake up,

And it will be day.

Smile, my soul, in your slumber!

Smile, my soul: it will be day!

                  Fernando Pessoa   – translated from the Portuguese by Richard Zenith

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