Poem of the Child

For the divine child who lives inside each one of us. May he/she always tell us stories. Merry Christmas!

Poema do Menino Jesus (Fernando Pessoa)

At noon, on a Spring day I had a dream, just like a photograph:
I saw Jesus Christ descend to Earth .
He ran down a hill, but He was a boy again running and rolling in the grass
Picking flowers and laughing so hard, that you could hear Him far away.
He had escaped Heaven.
He was ours, so much ours, to pretend to be the Second Person of the Trinity.
One day that God was sleeping and the Holy Ghost was flying around, He went to the box of miracles, And stole three of them:
With the first He made no one notice He had escaped; with the second He created Himself eternally human and child; and with the third He created a Christ eternally in the cross and left him nailed in the cross to serve as a model to the other ones .
Then He fled to the Sun and came down on the first sunbeam He was able to catch. Nowadays He lives in my village, with me.
He´s a beautiful child, with a natural smile.
He wipes His nose with His right arm, jumps in the puddles, picks flowers- He likes them- forgets things. throws stones, picks fruit in the orchards and runs away from the dogs.
Just because He knows they don´t like it, and everybody laughs at that, He runs after the girls who carry jugs on their head and pulls up their skirts.

To me, He taught me everything.
He taught me how to look at things.
He shows me all the colors there are in the flowers and shows me how pebbles can be funny when we have them in our hands and carefully look at them.
We get along so well, with everything, that we never think about each other.
We live, both of us, in a close agreement, like the right hand and the left hand.
When it starts to grow dark, we play the five little rocks on my doorstep. Very seriously, as it suits to a GOD and a poet. As if each little rock were the whole Universe and it would be very dangerous to let it fall.
Then I tell Him stories about humankind. And He smiles, because they are all incredible. He laughs at the kings and at the ones who are not kings. And He´s sorry to hear about the wars and the greed.
After that He falls asleep and I carry Him in my arms to my home, I lay Him in my bed, in a ritual, all human and all motherly.
He sleeps inside my soul.
Sometimes He wakes up in the middle of the night, plays with my dreams. Turns some of them upside down, piles them up, and claps, alone, smiling at my dreams.

When I die, Little Son, I´ll be the child, the littlest one. You´ll carry me in Your arms, take me to Your home. lay me down in Your bed, to sleep. Undress my being, tired and human. Tell me stories in case I wake up, so that I go back to sleep, and give me Your dreams – to play.