The King of Gaps

There lived, I know not when, never perhaps -
But the fact is he lived - an unknown king
Whose kingdom was the strange Kingdom of Gaps.
He was lord of what is twist thing and thing,
Of interbeings, of that part of us
That lies between our waking and our sleep,
Between our silence and our speech, between
Us and the consciousness of us; and thus
A strange mute kingdom did that weird king keep
Sequestered from our thought of time and scene.

Those supreme purposes that never reach
The deed - between them and the deed undone
He rules, uncrowned. He is the mistery which
Is between eyes and sight, nor blind nor seeing.
Himself is never ended nor begun,
Above his own void presence empty shelf
All He is but a chasm in his own being,
The lidless box holding not-being's no-pelf.

All think that he is God, except himself.

- Fernando Pessoa, Poesia Inglesa, I, edição e tradução de Luísa Freire, Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim, 2000, p.280.

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