Tea Time with Pessoa
I once read
About a writer
Who possessed spooky talents,
An occult-like gift for voices
Speaking the universal song
Of Disquiet
Pessoa was a curious man
Mild-mannered and un-
Assuming, a literary
Superman of sorts,
Capable of breaking
Through the walls
Of Perception
It’s funny,
Sometimes we love the idea
Of a writer more
Than we love the idea
Of the writing itself
Like Joyce and the drunken
Gibberish of a waking dream,
Or Proust and the endless descriptions
Of walks through the village of Cambray
Esoteric words are sharp knives
Capable of cutting only the rarest meat.
What of the writer
Who writes only
When the sun sets,
And hides his manuscripts in a chest,
Afraid of the world to see
What lies beneath?
One day I drank tea with Pessoa
In Lisbon, and we spoke
Of curious things,
Like heartbreak and failure,
Laughing quietly while watching
People watch us in turn.
