II

My gaze is clear like a sunflower.

It is my custom to walk the roads

Looking right and left

And sometimes looking behind me,

And what I see at each moment

Is what I never saw before,

And I’m very good at noticing things.

I’m capable of feeling the same wonder

A newborn child would feel

If he noticed that he’d really and truly been born.

I feel at each moment that I’ve just been born

Into a completely new world...

I believe in the world as in a daisy,

Because I see it. But I don’t think about it,

Because to think is to not understand.

The world wasn’t made for us to think about it

(To think is to have eyes that aren’t well)

But to look at it and to be in agreement.

I have no philosophy, I have senses...

If I speak of Nature it’s not because I know what it is

But because I love it, and for that very reason,

Because those who love never know what they love

Or why they love, or what love is.

To love is eternal innocence,

And the only innocence is not to think...

8 March 1914