If I Die Young - Alberto Caeiro

IF I DIE YOUNG,
Without ever publishing a book,
Without seeing how my poems look in print,
If someone wants to agitate for my cause,
I hope they do not agitate.
If it happens like that, it happens right.

Even if my poems are never printed,
They have their beauty in them, if they are beautiful.
But they can't be beautiful and stay unprinted,
Because the roots may be under the earth
But flowers bloom in the air free and easy to see.
It has to be that way. Nothing can prevent it.

If I die very young, hear this:
I was never anything but a kid playing.
I was a heathen like the sun and the water,
Of that universal religion wich only men doesn't have.
I was happy because I did not ask for anything at all,
Or tried to find anything,
And I didn't think there was any more explanation
Than that the word explanation having no meaning at all.

I didn't want anything but to be in the sun or in the rain -
In the sun when there was sun
And in the rain when it was raining
(And never the opposite),
Feel heat and cold and wind,
And going no farther than that.

One time I fell in love, I thought they would love me,
But I was not loved.
I was not loved for one main reason -
I did not have to be.

I consoled myself by going back to the sun and rain,
And sitting at the door of my hous again.
The fields are not as green for people in love
As for those who are not.
To feel is to be distracted.

Alberto Caeiro

God Is Dead: What Next?

"We have abolished the real world: what world is left? The apparent world perhaps? ... But no! With the real world we have also abolished the apparent world!" - Nietzsche

"According to Nietzsche's view of Buddhism, the Buddha taught his contemporaries how to face up to the stark, cold, meaninglessness of existence, face up to the fact that in this universe human existence has no special place, and remain aloof, untroubled and cheerful." - Robert G. Morrison*

I bet my shoes that this "spiritual existencialism" added to some lighthearted sense of humor might save the world someday, just like Superman! Zaratustra would be humanly, too humanly happy! ;-)

*Robert G. Morrison (Dharmachari Sagaramati) is the author of Nietzsche and Buddhism: A Study in Nihilism and Ironic Affinities, Oxford University Press, 1997