Fernando Pessoa

1888-1935

Queen Victoria Prize 1903

Antero de Quental Award 1934

“I'd woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist.”

“Writing is like paying myself a formal visit…”

“…to know how to think with emotions and to feel with intellect…”

“My heart is a little larger than the entire universe.”

Beyond the Bend in the Road

by Fernando Pessoa

Beyond the bend in the road

there may be a well, a castle.

There may be simply more road.

I neither know nor ask.

As long as I’m on the road before the bend

I simply look at the road before the bend,

since I can see only the road before the bend.

It would do no good to look elsewhere

or at what I can’t see.

Let’s just concentrate on where we are.

There’s beauty enough in being here, not elsewhere.

If anyone’s there beyond the bend in the road,

let them worry about what’s beyond the bend in the road.

That is the road, to them.

If we arrive there when we arrive we’ll know.

Now we only know that we’re not there.

Here there’s only the road before the bend, and before the bend

there’s the road with no bend at all.