1 - THE MAD FIDDLER
by Fernando Pessoa
· 18-4-1915 e 20-4-1917
Published 18/04/1915
THE MAD FIDDLER
Not from the northern road,
Not from the southern way,
First his wild music flowed
Into the village that day.
He suddenly was in the lane,
The people came out to hear,
He suddenly went, and in vain
Their hopes wished him to appear.
His music strange did fret
Each heart to wish 'twas free.
It was not a melody, yet
It was not no melody.
Somewhere far away,
Somewhere far outside
Being forced to live, they
Felt this tune replied.
Replied to that longing
All have in their breasts,
To lost sense belonging
To forgotten quests.
The happy wife now knew
That she had married ill,
The glad fond lover grew
Weary of loving still,
The maid and the boy felt glad
That they had dreaming only,
The lone hearts that were sad
Felt somewhere less lonely.
In each soul woke the flower
Whose touch leaves earthless dust,
The soul's husband's first hour,
The thing completing us,
The shadow that comes to bless
From kissed depths unexpressed,
The luminous restlessness
That is better than rest.
As he came, he went.
They felt him but half‑be.
Then he was quietly blent
With silence and memory.
Sleep left again their laughter,
Their tranced hope ceased to last,
And but a small time after
They knew not he had passed.
Yet when the sorrow of living,
Because life is not willed,
Comes back in dreams' hours, giving
A sense of life being chilled,
Suddenly each remembers -
It glows like a coming moon
On where their dream‑life embers -
The mad fiddler's tune.