I love the roses of Adonis’s gardens
I love the roses of Adonisʾs gardens.
Yes, Lydia, I love those wingèd roses,
Which one day are born
And on that day die.
Light for them is eternal, since
They are born after sunrise and end
Before Apollo quits
His visible journey.
Let us also make our lives one day,
Consciously forgetting thereʾs night, Lydia,
Before and after
The little we endure
11 July 1914
PESSOA, Fernando, A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems, Edited and Translated by Richard Zenith. New York /London, Penguin Books, 2006, p. 83