‘I sleep. If I dream, I do not know on waking’

I sleep. If I dream, I do not know on waking

What it was I dreamt.

I sleep. If I do not dream, I waken

In an open space

I do not recognize, because I woke

To what I still don’t know.

What’s best is neither dreaming nor not dreaming

And never waking.

From “Poems of Fernando Pessoa,” translated from the Portuguese and edited by Edwin Honig and Susan M. Brown (City Lights: 246 pp., $15.95 paper)