The Poetry Corner

Sonnet XVIII.

By Fernando Antnio Nogueira Pessoa

Indefinite space, which, by co-substance night, In one black mystery two void mysteries blends; The stray stars, whose innumerable light Repeats one mystery till conjecture ends; The stream of time, known by birth-bursting bubbles; The gulf of silence, empty even of nought; Thought's high-walled maze, which the outed owner troubles Because the string's lost and the plan forgot: When I think on this and that here I stand, The thinker of these thoughts, emptily wise, Holding up to my thinking my thing-hand And looking at it with thought-alien eyes, The prayer of my wonder looketh past The universal darkness lone and vast.