Explore "How Many Masks Wear We" by Fernando Pessoa on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
How many masks wear we, and undermasks,
Upon our countenance of soul, and when, / If for self-sport the soul itself unmasks, / Knows it the last mask off and the face plain?
The true mask feels no inside to the mask / But looks out of the mask by co-masked eyes.
Whatever consciousness begins the task / The task's accepted use to sleepness ties.
Like a child frighted by its mirrored faces, / Our souls, that children are, being thought-losing, / Foist otherness upon their seen grimaces / And get a whole world on their forgot causing; / And, when a thought would unmask our soul's masking, / Itself goes not unmasked to the unmasking.