This poem was written by Alberto Caeiro, one of the main heteronyms spawned by Fernando Pessoa – who is arguably the most widely influential modern Portuguese poet: an author of such gigantic creativity that his own self was overflown.
Pessoa consciously developed numerous creative personas; unlike a mere pseudonym, they were complex and multifaceted aspects of himself: complete with their own identities, creative styles and agendas, life stories and even astral charts. He created dozens of such “other selves”(at least 81 are documented), four of whom were so thoroughly developed they could easily be regarded as real people.
Alberto Caeiro was thus one of Pessoa’s forefront heteronyms. He was envisioned as a simple country person, with little in the way of aspirations and ambitions. Caeiro was uneducated and simple-minded, wholly unencumbered by the burden of thought. Pessoa conceived him as one who “sees things with the eyes only, not with the mind.” Given his effortless sense of being, the other heteronyms (including Pessoa Himself) regarded and revered Alberto Caeiro as the naive Master.