i'd give anything if only my life were an oxcart...

i'd give anything if only my life were an oxcart
squeaking down the road, early one morning
and later returning to where it started,
toward nightfall, down the same road.

i'd have no need of hopes - i'd need only wheels...
as i grew old i'd have no wrinkles or white hair...
when i'd be of no further use, they'd pull off my wheels
and i'd lie there overturned and broken, at the bottom of a pit.

the poem is from fernando pessoa's 'the keeper of sheep'. it somehow feels very much connected to the photo (a recent find). it's not just the fact that the man being enveloped by light might have a broken wheel or two of his own, and that maybe he too would rather live with no need of hopes. he might even, perhaps, at times, also, lie overturned and broken... but more so it feels that if you read the words and look at the picture you can imagine the poem gently falling out of his mouth in song, and you can hear it echoing about in the loneliness of his room...