EXPERIMENTS WITH
STEADYING OURSELVES

Alberto Caeiro: The road before the curve (translated by Chris Daniels)

Past the curve in the road
Maybe there’s a pond and maybe there’s a castle,
And maybe it just keeps going.
I don’t know and I don’t even ask.
While I’m walking on the road before the curve,
I only look at the road before the curve,
Because I can’t see anything but the road before the curve.
It’d do me no good to look for the other side
And at something I can’t see.
Let’s only care about the place where we are.
There’s enough beauty in being here and not anywhere else.
If there’s someone past the curve in the road,
Let them worry about what’s past the curve in the road,
That’s what the road is to them.
If we have to get there, when we get there we’ll know.
For the time being all we know is, we’re not there.
Here there’s only the road before the curve, and before the curve
There’s only the road without any curve at all.