When Spring Arrives

When spring arrives,
If Iʾm already dead,
The flowers will flower in the same way
And the trees will not be less green than last spring.
Reality doesnʾt need me.

It makes me enormously happy
To think that my death is of no importance whatsoever.
If I knew that I would die tomorrow
And that spring was the day after tomorrow,
I would die happy, because spring was the day after
   tomorrow.
If that is its time, why should it come at some other time?
I like everything to be real and to be right,
And I like it that way because thatʾs how it would be even if
    I didnʾt like it.
And so, if I die now, Iʾll die happy,
Because everything is real and everything is right.

You can pray in Latin over my coffin, if you like.
If you like, you can sing and dance in a circle around it.
I have no preferences for when I can no longer have
   preferences.
What will be, when it is, is what it will be when it is.

7 November 1915

PESSOA, Fernando, A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems, Edited and Translated by Richard Zenith. New York /London, Penguin Books, 2006, p. 60