THE KEEPER OF SHEEP

-Alberto Caeiro

1.

I get it, sad sun.
As imagination over. 
Sunset with cold peace
at window passes a
hand and plain sits  
in the sheep kept
when and like
what. In walks nature 
like at hand but 
all night a soul 
drifts through. I and 
people did without. 
Come in is like
a shepherd knows but
it’s seasons. Feel of 
the side. If wind 
down my looking 
never the butterfly

EPIGRAPH

–Mário de Sá-Carneiro

A die-cast salad in the spelched desert.
Ten humid denim qualms. So? Denotes chagrin?
Aqua, to dodge foes... Elmsome, brah. Esterized
Ichor morels— ‘E ate ‘em o’er, umm, a ruin…
Vined outré temples, camel mine—
Umm, some opaque, mid lunar ray…

Joshua Wilkerson is the author of Meadowlands/Xanadu/American Dream. With George Fragopoulos, he edits Beautiful Days Press.

Mário de Sá-Carneiro (1890-1916) was a Portuguese poet and writer. With Fernando Pessoa, he founded Orpheu, the central journal of Portuguese modernism. 

Alberto Caeiro (1889-1915) was a fictional shepherd and a heteronym of Fernando Pessoa.