The Poetry Corner

Sonnet XXIX.

By Fernando Antnio Nogueira Pessoa

My weary life, that lives unsatisfied On the foiled off-brink of being e'er but this, To whom the power to will hath been denied And the will to renounce doth also miss; My sated life, with having nothing sated, In the motion of moving poisd aye, Within its dreams from its own dreams abated-- This life let the Gods change or take away. For this endless succession of empty hours, Like deserts after deserts, voidly one, Doth undermine the very dreaming powers And dull even thought's active inaction, Tainting with fore-unwilled will the dreamed act Twice thus removed from the unobtained fact.