If After I Die

If, after I die, they should want to write my biography,

There's nothing simpler.

I've just two dates - of my birth, and of my death.

In between the one thing and the other all the days aremine.

I am easy to describe.

I lived like mad.

I loved things without any sentimentality.

I never had a desire I could not fulfil, becauseI never went blind.

Even hearing was to me never more than anaccompaniment of seeing.

I understood that things are real and all different fromeach other;

I understood it with the eyes, never with thinking.

To understand it with thinking would be to find themall equal.

One day I felt sleepy like a child.

I closed my eyes and slept.

And by the way,

I was only Nature poet.written under the pen name of Alberto Caeiro