Alejandra's and Kristel's beautiful poems reminded me of my favorite one when I was in high school and, as a teenager, I was looking for an answer to the eternal question: "How shall I live?"
The poem was written by a Polish poet - Leopold Staff, who started writing during the Modernism period and remained active until his death in 1957.
This is the only translation I've found and it's quite good though I prefer the definition of life in the original version: 'Lo, this is life: nothing, but still enough'...
TO LOVE AND LOSE
To love and lose, to thirst and pity too,
To fall in anguish and rise up again,
To cry ”away!” Yet longingly to woo-
Lo, this is life: mere vanity and pain.
Men traverse parching deserts for one gem;
For one great pearl, the ocean they explore;
Then die, and all that lingers after them
Are footprints on the sand and ripples on the water.
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