There’s enough metaphysics in just going about life with your eyes open.
What I think of the world?
Call me later.
What are my ideas about choses?.
And my opinion on causes and effects?
Meditating on god and the soul is just none of my business.
As for the creation of the world,
Don’t ask. For me, thinking of all this would be closing my eyes and not thinking. Pulling the drapes shut on my window (who needs drapes?).
The mystery in choses?. Useless to ask me.
The only mystery is that people even think about mystery.
That people squint their eyes shut in sunlight
And begin not to know what the sun is
And think heat comes from stoves and dryers.
Just open your eyes and see the sun!
If you do, you can’t think anymore about anything
because sunlight is fab, more than all the thoughts
of philosophers and poets lumped together.
Sunlight doesn’t know what it does
And, as such, doesn’t goof up, and is ordinary and good.
Metaphysics? The metaphysics of trees?
Of being green and pruned and having branches
And giving fruit at harvest, none of which makes us think,
We, who don’t know how to pay attention.
But what better metaphysics than that of trees,
Not knowing what they live for,
Nor knowing that they don’t know it?
«Constituição íntima das coisas»…
«Sentido íntimo do Universo»…
Tudo isto é falso, tudo isto não quer dizer nada.
É incrível que se possa pensar em coisas dessas.
É como pensar em razões e fins
Quando o começo da manhã está raiando, e pelos lados das árvores
Um vago ouro lustroso vai perdendo a escuridão.
Pensar no sentido íntimo das coisas
É acrescentado, como pensar na saúde
Ou levar um copo à água das fontes.
O único sentido íntimo das coisas
É elas não terem sentido íntimo nenhum.
Não acredito em Deus porque nunca o vi.
Se ele quisesse que eu acreditasse nele,
Sem dúvida que viria falar comigo
E entraria pela minha porta dentro
Dizendo-me, Aqui estou!
(Isto é talvez ridículo aos ouvidos
De quem, por não saber o que é olhar para as coisas.
Não compreende quem fala delas
Com o modo de falar que reparar para elas ensina.)
Mas se Deus é as flores e as árvores
E os montes e sol e o luar,
Então acredito nele,
Então acredito nele a toda a hora,
E a minha vida é toda uma oração e uma missa,
E uma comunhão com os olhos e pelos ouvidos.
“Vital meaning of a whoosh.
It’s all overrated, you can’t kid me.
It’s incredible that people can even think about all that.
How can people think of reasons and conclusions
when early morning opens rays of splendour, and among the trees
A slow golden glow dispels the darkness.
Thinking of the deepest sense of coisas
Is window dressing, like thinking about health
Or bringing a glass to the water of fountains.
The only deep meaning in coisas
Is that they have none.
I don’t believe in a god – I’ve never seen one.
If I were meant to believe,
One would come and talk to me, I’m sure of it,
And would step into my doorway on Winnett
Saying, hey I’m here!
(This may sound silly to some ears,
to those who have no clue what it is to look at things,
And, as such, don’t understand those who speak of them
In the way things teach, to those who recognize them.)
But if god is flowers and trees
and island and sun and moonlight
Then I believe
Then I believe without stopping,
And my life entire is mass and fond oration,
And communion, through eyes and ears.
Mas se Deus é as árvores e as flores
E os montes e o luar e o sol,
Para que lhe chamo eu Deus?
Chamo-lhe flores e árvores e montes e sol e luar;
Porque, se ele se fez, para eu o ver,
Sol e luar e flores e árvores e montes,
Se ele me aparece como sendo árvores e montes
E luar e sol e flores,
É qu ele quer que eu o conheça
Como árvores e montes e flores e luar e sol.
E por isso eu obedeço-lhe,
(Que mais sei eu de Deus que Deus de si próprio?),
Obedeço-lhe a viver, espontaneamente,
Como quem abre os olhos e vê,
E chamo-lhe luar e sol e flores e árvores e montes,
E amo-o sem pensar nele,
E penso-o vendo e ouvindo,
E ando com ele a toda a hora.
But if god is trees and flowers
Who needs that cipher “God”?
How about “flower” and “tree” and “island,” “sun” and “moonlight”;
Because, if God showed up as
sun and moonlight and flowers and trees and island,
Appeared to me as trees and island
And moonlight and sun and flowers
It means that we should know god
as trees and island and flowers and moonlight and sun.
And, as such, I am subject to great power.
(How could I know more of god than god knows?)
I obey by living, spontaneously,
My own eyes and ears open,
And I call God moonglow and soleil and camellia and cedar and
Centre Island
And I love without thinking god aloud,
And I think of god by seeing and hearing,
And go with God, on Winnett or Vaughan Road, or down Winona to No Frills, where Garrison Creek is, heading southward to the Lake and America and the ocean and the Lakehead and the whales and Gibraltar and my heartbeat, fraying, and the high towers of Chicago, and the road southeast to Albany, the graveyards where the workers lie and Coaticook where I taught once, and my heartbeat, fraying, and the emigrants from Poland, and J love you, and Niagara Falls.