oh k we make out that our privates sound as privates

put on k we make out a single private in the morning

put on k seeing and catching deceive us

say seeing and catching sound like making out and hearing

he tears paper, she pushes in an open cap, but why “annoyingly”?

the essence is to look at the sword

the sword sees without thinking

the sword sees when it saw itself

and doesn’t think when it saw

nor sees when it dresses its wound

the birds don’t come for seeds

stop thinking already

let’s make out

but this (sad we cover our privates)

this exigence should be studied, deeply

an apprenticeship of forgetting

to hijack liberties of that convent

where poets write “stars sound as old old nuns”

with “flowers penitent convicts of the day”

but on a final day stars sound as stars

flowers as flowers

privates as privates

which is why elas

we call to them

stars

flowers

swords

still, no birds

just a lot of

muxoxo

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Doug MacPherson is the co-author with Edward Smallfield of the book of poems, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. His poems have appeared in Windfall, Fourteen Hills, and Rising Waters, an anthology of poems reflecting on the great Midwestern flood of 1993. His short play, Orientation Island: Love at First Pixel, was recently staged as part of a night of short plays around the theme of Second Life, an online virtual world. He is currently working on his thesis for his M.F.A. in Poetry at San Francisco State University.

The above is a translation of XXIV from Fernando Pessoa's The Keeper of Sheep, written under the heteronym Alberto Caeiro. Sources include the original Portuguese poem and two English translations (one by Edwin Honig & Susan Brown; the other by Erin Mouré).