Portugal
November 2019

(Bones)

Where are you going hurried wayfarer?

Stop. Don't continue any farther;

Concerns, you have none more important

Than that seen before you.

Recall how many of this life have passed

Reflect that yours will end all the same

That to meditate the cause is enough

As all the others that pause here.

Think what influenced this luck

Among the world’s many concerns

How you barely consider death

But if you lift your eyes here

Stop, because for concerns of this weight

The more you pause, the more you might move forward

Aonde vais, caminhante, acelerado?

Pára...não prossigas mais avante;

Negócio, não tens mais importante,

Do que este, à tua vista apresentado.

Recorda quantos desta vida tem passado,

Reflecte em que terás fim semelhante,

Que para meditar causa é bastante

Terem todos mais nisto parado.

Pondera, que influído d'essa sorte,

Entre negociações do mundo tantas,

Tão pouco consideras na morte;

Porém, se os olhos aqui levantas,

Pára...porque em negócio deste porte,

Quanto mais tu parares, mais adiantas.
—
Este soneto é atribuído ao Padre António da Ascensão Teles, pároco da freguesia de São Pedro (na igreja de São Francisco) entre 1845 e 1848.

This sonnet is attributed to Father António da Ascensão Teles, priest of the parish of Saint Peter (in the church of Saint Francis) between 1845 and 1848. Bad translation is my own, with minor help from the internet.

It appears on the wall of a chapel constructed with human bones. In the midst of my attempts to speak to the world through my own modern words, the inflection of this poetry peered into my soul and accomplished the inverse: words from the past speaking to me in a language I barely know, yet can somehow read. A mystical coincidence.