Ricardo Reis - Odes (translated selection)

Translated selection of Odes by Ricardo Reis (heteronym of Fernando Pessoa). Music: "Living Kingdom" by Kourosh Dini "Raga Bhimpalasi" by Boris Moskvitin both from http://www.magnatune.com Odes read:  Follow your destiny, Water your plants, Love your roses. The rest is the shadow Of someone else's trees. Reality is Always more or less Of what we want. Only ourselves are always in accordance to our-selves. Soft is to live alone. Great and noble is always To simply live. Leave the pain on the altars As an ex-vow to the gods. Behold life from afar. Never question it. There is nothing she can Tell you. The answer Lies beyond the gods. But serenely Mimic Olimpus In your heart. The gods are gods Because they do not self think. --- Of the gods I ask only that they grant me That I ask them nothing. Asking is a yoke                 And being happy oppresses Because it is a certain state. Neither quiet nor unquiet my calm being I want to rise high above where men                 Have pleasure or pain. --- To be great, be whole: nothing Yours exaggerates or excludes. Be all in each thing. Apply as much as you are In the least you do. Thus in each lake the whole moon Shines, as it highly dwells. --- Nothing remains of nothing. Nothing are we. A bit under the sun and by the wind we delay ourselves Of the irrespirable darkness that would weight upon us         Of the imposed damp soil. Delayed cadavers that procreate. Laws made, statues seen, odes completed — Everything has its own grave. If we, fleshes To which an intimate sun gives blood, have         A setting west, why not them? We are tales telling tales, nothing. --- I want ignored, and calm By ignored and my own By calm, filling my days With wanting nothing more of them. Those whom riches touch Gold rashes the skin. Those on whom fame blows Their life is but a fog. To those whom happiness Is a Sun, night will come. But to the one that expects naught Everything that comes is grateful. --- In ourselves live countless; If I think or feel, I ignore The one who thinks or feels. I am merely the place Where it is felt and thought. I have more souls than one. There are more mes that myself. I exist however Indifferent to all. I make them silent: I speak. The crossed impulses Of what I feel or do not feel Dispute over who I am. I ignore them. They dictate nothing To whom I know as myself: I write.