From “Tabacaria” by Álvaro de Campos (1928)

Source: Pedro Ribeiro Simões from Lisboa, Portugal, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

This parenthetical is from the middle of the long poem“Tabacaria” (“Tobacco Shop”) by the Pessoan heteronym Álvaro de Campos (dated January 15, 1928).

(Eat chocolates, little one;
Eat chocolates!
Look, there’s nothing more metaphysical in the world than chocolates.
Notice that all the religions don’t teach us more than the candy store does.
Eat, filthy child, eat!
I wish I could eat chocolates with the same truth that you eat them!
But I think and, when I take off the silver paper, which is made of tinfoil,
I lay it all on the ground, like I’ve laid down life.)