1930
How we lose ourselves! This is the language my blood understands. This is food my stomach craves. This is the ground my feet know how to walk on. And yet I am no longer from here. I look like a tree that has been transplanted, in poor health in its new country, but that will die if it returns to its homeland.
Diary I Bucolic
Life is made of nothings:
From great ranges of hills
Awaiting the movement;
of wavy fields
By the wind;
Of the ruins of residential
Houses with signs
Of nests that were
Once in the eaves
Of dust;
Of the shade of a fig tree;
To see this wonder:
My Father planting a vine
Like a mother braiding her daughter’s hair.
The Trás-os-Montes of my soul! Cross the Marão hills and walk straight into paradise! (...)
Diary II'll be back tomorrow. A week. It's not enough. I needed a lot more. But even so, I have enough dirt in my nails to fill the entire Central Region. I need this. I need to come and work on the weakness in this strain from time to time.
Diary IThe day consisted of the camellia bushes and the vines I planted with my Father. Few times in my thirty years of life have I felt so together, so sure, as I did with that seventy-year-old man planting flowers. Because my Father, so thin and huddled over the earth, fills the wildest restlessness with peace and confidence.
Diary II went to the village to meet her in Jardim da Carreira. Camilo's bust, startled, eyeing me up and down with a tragic look on his face. I calmed him down: - No, we don't have Ana Plácido, my friend!
Diary I1940
Here I am. I came to show the woman to the old people, to Senhora da Azinheira chapel and to the elm tree. Everyone liked her.
Diary IThe day was spent in Guiães, hunting and picking grapes in the morning, and reading poetry in the afternoon in a cemetery that you have to see to believe it. If one day I come with a scythe, I will write a page about these granite necropolises from Trás-os-Montes, nestled in the top of a hill, with the air of someone who washes his hands of life and death.
Diary II went to show her the village. But I went to show it to her like my grandparents showed it to their wives – on foot. It was only six leagues...
Diary I Christmas Day
A sunny Christmas Day;
Wars are raging all over the world and my eyes hurt;
But with God in the Marão hills and no snow, no evil
Will resist,
Too much, out of time, this Latin
That Father Bento knows is enough
To transcend myself
And how much bad news the mail brings in.
1950
The family manor, with its tiled ground floor, with a quartered coat of arms at the top, with hoes in every field… It was from this reality that I departed, and it is to this reality that I always return, regardless of how many different paths I take in life. It’s a guaranteed landmark with witnesses, which never leaves me disoriented when I wish to liven up the extremes of my soul. All I need to do is scratch off the crust of its appearance a little, and there I am in my base, confronted.
Diary VIIII came to get the old man, but I'm returning without him. I didn't have the courage to pull him out of bed and carry him downstairs, just as I didn't have the courage to lift my daughter out of her crib and carry her upstairs. (…) And here I am, crucified between despondency and hope, with the past and the future in each hand, without being able to tie them up.
Diary VIIIIntroducing a granddaughter to her grandfather. The best viaticum I could bring the old man for the journey yonder he's about to make. I placed the twig of tender life into his dry arms, and the peace that my own existence never gave him washed over him in splendour. (…) The marathon of life now had three relay runners: one who was tired, who had definitely lost the race; another who was getting tired, who would certainly lose too; and yet another, who was still raring to go, and who might well end up winning it.
Diary VIIIHere I am planting my daughter’s roots, plunging her into the earth as my Father used to do with the tender roots of a pet rhododendron. What I also want from her is the extension of the red vitality of some honourable and obstinate chromosomes.
Diary VIII1960
My birth house has been updated, with all the shades of the past painted white. Human nature is like that. The most affectionate and faithful things always end up whitewashing the sooty walls of memories. I don’t forget the dead; I just forget to remember them.
Diary IXI spin three hundred and sixty degrees around the axis. And the image of what I am is stuck in my eyes: the human incarnation of these immovable, dry and desperate hills, awaiting the winter storms and the spring sunshine with the same unshakable stoicism.
Diary IX Embers
I'm warming my dreams by the fireplace,
Without noticing the ash of the embers.
Or looking at them absently
In the dull unconsciousness
That they are the veronica of death.
Sitting in my usual chair,
Unreal diligence
Passing slowly through the cold night,
Myself being absent-minded,
I give concrete heat to fantasy
As if I were imagining the fire.
The hallucinations that can arise from a sudden psychological decompression! After a few days of total isolation here, this morning, in the Village, I had the feeling I was in Paris.
Diary IXWith so many judgments in my hair – and fresh, almost all of them! –, I come to the end of my life in complete ignorance of the only thing I really care about getting to know: these people. What will she think of the scruffy person that crosses the town square two or three times a year with a rifle on his shoulder, disappearing mysteriously into the hills, always wearing the same corduroy trousers, the same Basque beret, and the same gaunt face? Will she know that, obliged by the forces of destiny to emigrate to other worlds, I left my soul here and come back to embody it from time to time? (...)
Diary IX Primary Instruction
Don't know: imagine...
Let the master speak, and daydream…
Old age knows, and only knows
That the sea doesn’t fit
Into the puddle formed in the sand by innocence.
Dream!
Invent an alphabet
Of illusions…
A secret a-b-c
That you spell in the margins of lessons...
Fly out of the window
Into any sun that smiles at you!
Wings? aren’t necessary:
Go in the lap of the wind,
Wings of fantasy…
Here we are, Zé Ferreiro and I, at the anvil. Him hammering away at the iron, and me at my words. But there is more hammering and fewer sparks at my forge…
Diary X(…) Everything I am is clearly not from here. But everything I am belongs to this land in an obscure way. My life is like a viola string stretched between two worlds. I hear music in the other one, while I feel the vibrations of this one.
Diary XWhatever the season of the year and my destination, before leaving home I already know what my eyes are going to feast on along the way. Snow in Larouco, fire-coloured rhododendrons in Magueija, heavily-laden chestnut trees in Carrazedo de Montenegro. Nevertheless, I always leave with the same excitement, and return with the same fascination. For the true believer, Mass, which never varies, is never repetitive. And that’s my Mass. An intimate and daily communion with nature, in the trances of its perpetual agony, death and resurrection.
Diary XI don’t usually do it. But today, as I was in a good mood, I provided the text and gave the meaning. After showing the corners of the earth and the wide horizons surrounding it, I added: – S. Martinho is the perfect refuge. A fortress in which I shelter two or three times a year, and where I feel impregnable every day.
Diary XBeating rye on the threshing floor next door, which belongs to the family and where sixty years ago my mother hurriedly left her broom and came crawling in, her water having broken and in excruciating pain, to give birth to me under the tiles. As I listen to the thud of the flails thrashing the sheaves, I ponder on that distant birth, which the date and the casually recreated scenario painfully reminded me of. It seems to have been an easy birth, and no-one predicted that I would become a poet. But I did. And then the difficulties began. Tempted by the promises of the imagination, even though my shyness objected, and driven by circumstances, which for a long time I called fate, I bypassed the risks of the parish, set sail into the unknown and, by the time I realised, I was entangled in a thicket of habits and contradictions from which I have never been able to escape.
Diary XOf all the myths I’m familiar with, that of Antaeus is the one I most admire and the one I most often put to the test, without forgetting, of course, to reduce the size of the giant to a human scale, and the divine body of the Olympian Earth to the natural ground of Trás-os-Montes. And there is no doubt that the results obtained confirm its veracity. Whenever, on the verge of succumbing to the diseases of despondency, I touch one of these rocks and all the lost energy starts running through my veins again. It’s like being given an instant blood transfusion. (...)
Diary XIWhenever I go up there, I see the Marão hills and the Douro, and I start thinking about death, and what saddens me the most is not being able to set eyes on my daughter.
Diary XI1970
The entire day in bed nursing a bad dose of the flu. The village life comes to my room in the form of familiar noises to which I immediately give real meaning. The neighing of Zé Ferreiro's horse, recognising his footsteps on the pavement from the shop, Roberto's squeaky oxcart loaded with firewood, Gomes' clogs clacking on the threshing floor. People in a hurry tell me if they’ve been watering the grass, if there’s thunder in the air, if there's a fire. Ringing the bell, telling me if it’s mass, a funeral or prayer time. And I’m one big emotional communion with the framework of the lives surrounding me. Even so, walled in and burning up with fever, talkative or delirious, I don't really know anymore, I find myself once again possessed by the revelation of my unity. The unity of a man that fate tried to tear apart in every possible way, but for whom it is sufficient to feel the signs of this primordial ground to rediscover himself for once and for all, deep down in his roots and naturally integrated in the harmonious game of the multiple connections of gregarious existence.
Diary XIIMr. Botelho's old school finally rebuilt and modernised. More sunlight, better hygiene, less grammar and less corporal punishment. But my childhood mimosa flowers were missing from the surrounding yard. And I spent the whole afternoon with a spade and trowel in my hand planting them. I won't be here to see them grow like I used to. Forget it. My aim wasn’t to plant flowers in the past, but in the future.
Diary XIIWith my arms around my ghosts, which are always there on this date, I go about stoking the embers in the fireplace. It's my Father, it's my Mother, it's my Grandfather... They’re sitting beside me, silent, in a lethal recollection. They came because I came, and as they told me everything they had to say so long ago, they just keep me company. This is a supplementary Christmas Eve, parallel to the other, but silent and abstinent, and one which the rest of the family, who are already asleep, do not share. The night is long, and none of us is in a hurry. We let the sacred hours drift by, waiting for the morning light. They will then discreetly return to the peaceful world of the dead and I will wake up in the unsettling world of the living. Until another Christmas brings us all together again, still here, united by my memories, or wherever I imagine them remembering me in eternal oblivion.
Diary XIIIThe house scanned by a cinematographic lens. It took a great deal of work to convince me to consent to the intrusion, but the director's patient tenacity and a strange feeling of an imminent end overcame my scruples. Let the intimacy of image of a man surrounded by intimate symbols: my Father's scales, my Mother's distaff, a flag of souls, a stone Calvary, a Final Judgment made of clay, a mortar, a seashell… This might enable future readers to approach my memory more sympathetically, given the reality I only showed them in writing.
Diary XIIIMy birth house. The sacred retreat of memory. Paralysed eternity.
Diary XIII1980
My birth house, ripe cherries, nests, flowers… But I can’t find myself in this quintessential, bucolic peace. I’m already living the affliction of tomorrow today.
Diary XIIIBy expanding the horizons of the world, with all kinds of needs I can no longer do without, life has made me a ubiquitous being. My supporting roots are here and my grazing roots are far away…
Diary XIIIA man of many letters, I don't know if I suspect that the flagrancy of nature always falls short of the literature that reflects it, I wanted to see it to believe it. And the Cartesian doubt came from Paris to wander through this harsh reality that I portrayed in books and that I will now throw open to you without the use of words. I believe he gave in before returning and that he had a lot to tell. The hills, so Celtic, seemed bewitched; the Douro, stunning at the feet of S. Leonardo, was a mirror of eternity; and the Roncão port wine he drank will never leave his palate. I’m unbeatable in this regard. When I have someone to stay here, I’m a guaranteed successful host. Thanks to the abundant resources of this land, my guests leave doubly grateful. I fascinate their senses and intoxicate their memory.
Diary XIIIMy father's house. The family’s sacred base. But words desert me due to the emotion I feel when I step inside. I swallow them all.
Diary XIVWhenever I come here, as soon as I arrive on the land, I get the impression that I’m changing inside. I suddenly forget how much I've learned since I was forced to travel the world, and at the same time I remember everything I knew before. It's as if the most authentic part of me is waiting for me here.
Diary XIVThe visit of Camilo José Cela, who came to Portugal to receive an award. In my Iberian fervour, I don't know to what extent I often decide to invest every single Spaniard I know in all the authentic grandeur of Spain, which will often disconcert those involved. Maybe that's what happened today.
Diary XIV Murmurs
There are no muses here.
There are tutelary shadows
To which I live obliged
and devoted,
And they inspire me too.
But so restrained
that my song
Is always like a whispered psalm
At an altar.
So brief and embargoed
So as not to disturb
The silence of the past in the present.
I’ve written so many pages and so many poems here, and I die in the conviction that I have said nothing significant about my connection to the land in which I was born and which I have never really left. Everything I was far away served merely to bury my roots deeper. (...)
Diary XVI fill up the boot of the car before fleeing. Potatoes, apples, nuts, eggs, partridges and sausages. But I omit the sparse melancholy of a Christmas – already manifest in everyone’s cordial face and in the very solemn and frozen nature of time – which won’t be coming with me and will make my soul ache with remorse, because the only place I know how to celebrate it is here. Closed, the house is like saying no to the past. The dead within it will have no fireplace, no memory.
Diary XVI say goodbye to my father's house, the garden, the elm tree and the boulders. To the only riches I really enjoyed having in this world, and which I crave. That I didn't have to be given, but that I deserved.
Diary XVI spent the entire afternoon climbing up to the top, certainly for the last time, of the familiar hills overlooking the Douro, my faithful eyes taking in every splendid image like a sacrament.
Diary XVI come and go. I lose myself there and find myself here.
Diary XVMyths are eternal truths. When I arrive here, I always feel like an aching Antaeus, on touching the stimulating land and regaining my strength. Not that of the body, but that of the soul. It's a sudden taste of being in the world, an intimate and healthy joy of the spirit, as if I had suddenly been given reasons for living that I don't have when I’m away.I know that this is the ground in which I will be buried. But even this certainty doesn’t dampen my exaltation. When talking to my ancestors, who lie in it and who I resurrect all the time, the very obsession with death I bring with me is transformed into an inexpressible feeling of perpetuity.
Diary XV(…) We are born in a place. And we spend the rest of our lives seeing the world from the boulder that served us as our first viewpoint.
Diary XV1990
(…) I have known for a long time that I’m the beneficiary of a sacred heritage, which I will only deserve if I never forget that S. Martinho is a cradle in which I have to be born all the time and die, one day.
Diary XVIEven though it was falling apart, I insisted on passing through. It's just that absolutely nothing in my life has any meaning without this place. S. Martinho is a landmark of guidance and security I see in every hour of perplexity and anguish and from all corners of the world.
Diary XVII enter my father's house sleepwalking as usual. I haven’t crossed the threshold completely sure of myself since I left for the first time. (…) Fate took things too far with me. It messed up my state of mind. It planted me here and then dragged me away. And my roots haven’t ever taken hold anywhere else since.
Diary XVI