The Clouds Are Dark By Fernando Pessoa

The clouds are dark

But toward the south

A scrap of sky

Is sadly blue.

So too in the mind,

Which has no answer,

A scrap remembers

That the heart exists.

This scrap is what

We know as the truth

Of eternal beauty

Beyond what is.

From “Fernando Pessoa & Co.,” edited and translated by Richard Zenith (Grove Press: 290 pp., $25)