Poem

[Israfil]

Many mixed feelings on this one. I thought about the paradox of egoism/altruism. How you can't really have one without the other. Wrote beneath a beautiful tree, having a nice beer after 12-hour work day, by the silence of 1 AM Rio de Janeiro.

What is a tree?

Its parts separated by the intelect

You see a leaf, forget the tree

See the tree, forget the forest

 

And what would I do if I were a leaf,

Rather than nourish it?

For if the trunk, the roots and branches forgets me

As a leaf I wither and die

 

I hope as leaf

To root become

And nourish the tree as well

For the trunk, the branches and leaves forget me

 

I as a root wither and die

 

And what would I do as a tree

Rather than nourish the forest?

For I would wither, and the land beneath me desert

If it weren't for the trees alongside me

 

Such is the nature of our kind

 

We nurture those seemingly above us

So that our existence doesn't waste away to time

 

So we don't dry and fall

As every leaf does

 

Until, eventually,

The entire forest can live

Without the burden of bearing us

 

Nature killing away

The blind egotistical part

That it gave birth to

In order to keep itself alive.