LRT Poetry (whoa! it even rhymes!)

If you use the LRT 1 and 2 (or maybe even the MRT--I'm not sure) you might have encountered the ads posted as a promotion by the Instituto Cervantes translating into Filipino, Spanish poems written by such giants as Pablo Neruda side by side with the orignal Spanish verse. Most of the poems I read were boring, but I must say, I was enamored by Luis Cernuda's "Si el hombre pudiera decir lo que ama".

The verse reads:

Tú justificas mi existencia:
si no te conozco, no he vivido;
si muero sin conocerte, no muero, porque no he vivido.

Which they translated as:

Ikaw and dahilan kung bakit ako nandito:
Kung di kita nakilala, di sana ako nabuhay;
Kung ako'y mamamatay nang di kita nakilala,
Hindi ako mamamatay, dahil hindi ako nabuhay.

Translated in English by Spanish to English (in case you don't understand Spanish or Filipino) as:

You justify my existence:
if I do not meet you, I haven't lived;
if I die without meeting you, I don't die, because I haven't lived.

(You'd have to trust me when I say that the Filipino version is much more romantic and melodious than the lousy English version. Click here to read the whole thing.)

Isn't this a romantic thing to say to someone? I don't die because I never lived. I'd love to be one who would make someone live their life so fully that they forget they're alive without me. With that said I must say that I think this rather cheesy and a tad bit extreme. I can imagine ladies rolling their eyes to heaven if I said anything as queso-crap as that. Yeah yeah, so I'm incapable of saying something romantic.