...of Nature

Ah, tall twilight mountains, narrow moonlit streets, if only I enjoyed your lack of awareness of the […] your spiritual vision of the material world, free of preoccupations, devoid of sensibility, with no room for feelings or thoughts or disquiet! Trees, never anything more than trees, with your green leaves so pleasant to the eyes, you are so indifferent to my cares and griefs, so consoling to my anguish because you lack eyes to see it and a soul to look through those eyes to understand and mock! Stones on the road, broken tree stumps, the mere anonymous soil of the earth, your insensitivity to my soul is like a sisterly caress, a balm to me… […] beneath the sun or beneath the moon of the Earth, my mother, so much more tenderly maternal than my own human mother, because you cannot criticise me, because you do not have a soul with which unwittingly to analyse me, nor can you throw me rapid glances that provoke thoughts about me you would not confess to yourself. Vast sea, my clamourous childhood companion, you bring me peace and cradle me because you have no human voice and will not one day whisper into other human ears of my weaknesses and imperfections. Great sky, blue sky, so close to the mystery of the angels […] you do not look at me with envious eyes, and when you pin the sun on your breast you do not do so to attract me nor […] nor don a mask of stars in order to make fun of me… Immense peace of nature, so maternal in your utter ignorance of me; distant quiet […] so fraternal in your utter inability ever to know me… I would like to pray to your oneness and your calm, as an expression of the joy that comes with being able to love without suspicion or doubt; I would like to give ears to your not-hearing, eyes to your sublime […] and to be seen and heard by you through those imagined eyes and ears, glad to be present at your Nothingness, attentive to what is distant, as if to a definitive death, clinging to no hopes of any other life beyond a God, beyond the possibility of growing voluptuously old and beyond the spiritual nature of all matter.

[The Book of Disquiet, Pessoa, F.]