English
version
An introduction
to the poem: The
set of three poems, called "The warnings", begins with
a poem dedicated to Bandarra, the XVI century shoemaker turned prophet
whom interpreters credit with foretelling accurately the coming
of a period when Portugal was under Spanish rule, the subsequent
1640 revolution and liberation under king John IV. The same Bandarra
is said (by a miracle of interpretation) to have foretold a future
supremacy of Portugal among nations. The
second poem is dedicated to father Antonio Vieira who was the true
theoreticist of the Fifth Empire to which Portugal (and the world)
would be lead by a great king. Finally, the third poem does not
have a name (the only nameless poem in Mensagem) because
the third prophet, the man who voices the third warning, is Fernando
Pessoa himself! He says he is waiting for the King, which
tradition says will come in a misty morning, and he is despairing
of witnessing his advent in his own time...
Third Warning
I
write my book at the brink of despair.
My heart has nothing to hold.
I have my eyes warm with water.
Only you, Lord, give me a reason to live for.
Only the feeling and thinking of you
Fills and gilds my empty days.
But when will you want to return?
When is the King? When the Hour?
When will you come to be the Christ
Of one on whom the false God died,
And to awaken, from the evil of today,
The
New Earth and the New Skies?
When will you come, oh Hidden One,
Dreamed by Portuguese of all eras,
To turn me into more than the uncertain breath
Of a great yearning that God inspired?
Ah, when will you wish, by returning,
Turn my hope into love?
From the mist and the yearning, when?
When, my
Dream and my Lord?
|