I think there’s an edge of humor to the pathos in this poem by Fernando Pessoa… When the idea of birthdays becomes sad…
Birthday
Back when they used to celebrate my birthday
I was happy and no one was dead.
In the old house even my birthday was a centuries-old tradition,
And everyone’s joy, mine included, was as sure as any religion
Back when they used to celebrate my birthday
I enjoyed the good health of understanding nothing.
Of being intelligent in my family’s eyes,
And of not having the hopes that others had for me.
When I began to have hopes, I no longer knew how to hope.
When I began to look at life, it had lost all meaning for me.
Yes, that person I knew as me,
That person with a heart and family,
That person of quasi-rural evenings spent all together,
That person who was a boy they loved,
That person–my God!–whom only today I realize I was…
How faraway! …
(Not even an echo…)
When they used to celebrate my birthday!
The person I am today is like the damp in the hall at the back of the house
That makes the walls mildew…
What I am today (and the house of those who loved me trembles through my tears)–
What I am today is their having sold the house,
It’s all of them having died,
It’s I having survived myself like a spent match.
Back when they used to celebrate my birthday…
Ah, how I love, like a person, those days!
How my soul physically longs to return there,
Via a metaphysical and carnal journey,
In a duality of me to me…
To eat the past like the bread of hunger, with no time for butter between the teeth!
I see it all again, so vivid it blinds me to what’s here…
The table with extra place settings, fancier china, more glasses,
The sideboard full of sweets and fruits, and other things in the shadow of the lower shelf.
Elderly aunts, different cousins, and all for my sake,
Back when they used to celebrate my birthday.
Stop it, heart!
Don’t think! Leave thinking to the head!
O my God, my God, my God!
I no longer have birthdays.
I endure.
My days add up.
I’ll be old when I’m old.
That’s all.
If only I’d filched the goddamn past and brought it away in my pocket!
When they used to celebrate my birthday!
13 June 1930
Fernando Pessoa writing under the pseudonym Àlvaro de Campos, “the jaded sensationist”. Translation by the brilliant Richard Zenith.