This Is What You Shall Do...

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone who asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy. 

Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem.

- Walt Whitman, from the preface of Leaves of Grass

Do Not Ask Your Children to Strive by William Martin

Do not ask your children

to strive for extraordinary lives.

Such striving may seem admirable,

but it is the way of foolishness.

Help them instead to find the wonder

and the marvel of an ordinary life.

Show them the joy of tasting

tomatoes, apples and pears.

Show them how to cry

when pets and people die.

Show them the infinite pleasure

in the touch of a hand.

And make the ordinary come alive for them.

The extraordinary will take care of itself.

- William Martin (via book The Parent’s Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents)

Archaic Torso of Apollo

 We cannot know his legendary head

with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso

is still suffused with brilliance from inside,

like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise

the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could

a smile run through the placid hips and thighs

to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced

beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders

and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,

burst like a star: for here there is no place

that does not see you. You must change your life.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

 

Blue Horses by Mary Oliver

I step into the painting of the four blue horses.

I am not even surprised that I can do this.

One of the horses walks toward me.

His blue nose noses me lightly. I put my arm

over his blue mane, not holding on, just

commingling.

He allows me my pleasure.

Franz Marc died a young man, shrapnel in his brain.

I would rather die than explain to the blue horses

what war is.

They would either faint in horror, or simply

find it impossible to believe.

I do not know how to thank you, Franz Marc.

Maybe our world will grow kinder eventually.

Maybe the desire to make something beautiful

is the piece of God that is inside each of us.

Now all four horses have come closer,

are bending their faces toward me

as if they have secrets to tell.

I don’t expect them to speak, and they don’t.

If being so beautiful isn’t enough, what

could they possibly say?

- Mary Oliver (via the brilliant Maria Popova)

If you haven't watched the movie War Horse then please do so. Sapiens and their ready made stupidness killed millions of horses in world war 2. 

Wendell Berry on His Hopes for Humanity

Do not think me gentle

because I speak in praise

of gentleness, or elegant

because I honor the grace

that keeps this world. I am

a man crude as any,

gross of speech, intolerant,

stubborn, angry, full

of fits and furies. That I

may have spoken well

at times, is not natural.

A wonder is what it is.

- Wendell Berry

If you are wondering how a "Sapien Skeptic" that I am listening to an interview that has "hope" and "humanity" together in the title...  then make no mistake. 

Wendel Berry answers that question (@ ~14 mins): 

Question: I am wondering if putting faith in the people is a wise investment...?

Wendel Berry: I am not putting the faith in the people and putting my faith in some of the people. The ones who are committed. 

Another obvious insight Sapiens refuse to face: 

The aim of the industrial revolution from year one has been to replace people with technology. So it's a little contemptible to hear these people express in surprise at this late date that we have an employment problem. I don't know if there any politicians of visibility who could say that. 

We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world.

We have been wrong. 

We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary

the assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. 

And that requires that we make the

effort to know the world and learn what is good for it.

- Wendell Berry, The Long-Legged House

Good!

and Jacko has the best narration of Kipling's poem If:

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Nallathor Veenai (A Pretty Lyre)

Nallathor Veenai by Mahakavi Bharathi

After making a pretty Veena,

Does anyone throw it in the dust?

Please tell me Oh, goddess Siva Sakthi,

You have made me with,

Glowing sparks of wisdom,

Would you not give me the strength,

To live my life useful to this world?

Please tell me Oh, goddess Siva Sakthi,

Or will you let me become a burden to this earth on which I stand?

I asked you for a body,

Which can travel as it wants like a ball,

I asked you for a mind to cut off poisonous thoughts,

I asked you for a soul which is new every day,

I asked you for a tongue, which would sing,

About you, even if it is burnt,

And I asked you but for a stable mind.

I asked for a mind that cuts of desires

Do you have any objection to granting me all these?

Great poet Bharathi died in 1921; 99 years ago at a tender age of 33. This photo of his intense burning eyes with his hands on his wife's shoulder meant to be a message to the society. Women's rights were not just empty talks to him but he lived what he preached. In a country where donkeys were looked down on, he used to kiss the donkeys in the streets of India.

He lived in a society that was at least 500 years backward to his thoughts. Women's rights were just one piece of his powerful wisdom. Sir, I am privileged to live and share the same earth as you did. Thank you.

He didn't live to see his dream come true but his poems had already ignited the spark. Those lines in his poem of living with the curse of knowledge have a hidden meaning which portrays the difficulty of living in a society filled with mostly vanity. We need more Bharathi's in this generation who can sacrifice and help animals from this brutal and vicious species namely homo sapiens.

I Praise My Destroyer

In the name of the daybreak

and the eyelids of morning

and the wayfaring moon

and the night when it departs,

I swear I will not dishonor

my soul with hatred,

but offer myself humbly

as a guardian of nature,

as a healer of misery,

as a messenger of wonder,

as an architect of peace.

In the name of the sun and its mirrors

and the day that embraces it

and the cloud veils drawn over it

and the uttermost night

and the male and the female

and the plants bursting with seed

and the crowning seasons

of the firefly and the apple,

I will honor all life

—wherever and in whatever form

it may dwell—on Earth my home,

and in the mansions of the stars.

- School Prayer by Diane Ackerman from I Praise My Destroyer

Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. 

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

- Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

- Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

- Elizabeth Bishop

This Dog

Every morning this dog, very attached to me,
Quietly keeps sitting near my seat
Till touching its head
I recognize its company.
This recognition gives it so much joy
Pure delight ripples through its entire body.
Among all dumb creatures
It is the only living being
That has seen the whole man
Beyond what is good or bad in him
It has seen
For his love it can sacrifice its life
It can love him too for the sake of love alone
For it is he who shows the way
To the vast world pulsating with life.
When I see its deep devotion
The offer of its whole being
I fail to understand
By its sheer instinct
What truth it has discovered in man.
By its silent anxious piteous looks
It cannot communicate what it understands
But it has succeeded in conveying to me
Among the whole creation
What is the true status of man.

- This Dog, Rabindranath Tagore

Two Poems About What Dogs Think

I am the dog you put to sleep, as you like to call the needle of oblivion, come back to tell you this simple thing: I never liked you. When I licked your face, I thought of biting off your nose. When I watched you toweling yourself dry, I wanted to leap and unman you with a snap. I resented the way you moved, your lack of animal grace, the way you would sit in a chair to eat, a napkin on your lap, a knife in your hand. I would have run away but I was too weak, a trick you taught me while I was learning to sit and heel and, greatest of insults, shake hands without a hand. I admit the sight of the leash would excite me, but only because it meant I was about to smell things you had never touched. You do not want to believe this, but I have no reason to lie: I hated the car, hated the rubber toys, disliked your friends, and worse, your relatives. The jingling of my tags drove me mad. You always scratched me in the wrong place. All I ever wanted from you was food and water in my bowls. While you slept, I watched you breathe as the moon rose in the sky. It took all of my strength not to raise my head and howl. Now, I am free of the collar, free of the yellow raincoat, monogrammed sweater, the absurdity of your lawn, and that is all you need to know about this place, except what you already supposed and are glad it did not happen sooner, that everyone here can read and write, the dogs in poetry, the cats and all the others in prose.

Three Poems

Voices to voices, lip to lip
i swear (to noone everyone) constitutes
undying; or whatever this and that petal confutes . . .
to exist being a peculiar form of sleep

what's beyond logic happens beneath will;
nor can these moments be translated: i say
that even after April
by God there is no excuse for May


- bring forth your flowers and machinery: sculpture and prose
flowers guess and miss
machinery is the more accurate, yes
it delivers the goods, Heaven knows

(yet are we mindful, though not as yet awake,
of ourselves which shout and cling, being
for a little while and which easily break
in spite of the best overseeing)

i mean that the blond absence of any program
except last and always and first to live
makes unimportant what i and you believe;
not for philosophy does this rose give a damn . . .

bring on your fireworks, which are a mixed
splendor of piston and pistil; very well
provided an instant may be fixed
so that it will not rub, like any other pastel.

(While you and i have lips and voices which
are for kissing and to sing with
who cares if some oneeyed son of a bitch
invents an instrument to measure Spring with?

each dream nascitur, is not made . . .)
why then to Hell with that: the other; this,
since the thing perhaps is
to eat flowers and not to be afraid.

- e. e. cummings: three poems

Things That Might Have Been

I think of things that weren’t, but might have been.
The treatise on Saxon myths Bede never wrote.
The inconceivable work Dante might have had a glimpse of,
As soon as he’d corrected the Comedy’s last verse.
History without the afternoons of the Cross and the hemlock.
History without the face of Helen.
Man without the eyes that gave us the moon.
On Gettysburg’s three days, victory for the South.
The love we never shared.
The wide empire the Vikings chose not to found.
The world without the wheel or the rose.
The view John Donne held of Shakespeare.
The other horn of the Unicorn.
The fabled Irish bird that lights on two trees at once.
The child I never had.

- Jorge Luis Borges, Borges: Selected Poems

And This Much Is Enough

I need a jug of wine and a book of poetry, 
Half a loaf for a bite to eat, 
Then you and I, seated in a deserted spot, 
Will have more wealth than a Sultan’s realm.

- Omar Khayyam

Quote of the Day

Happy are men who yet before they are killed Can let their veins run cold ... And some cease feeling Even themselves or for themselves. Dullness best solves The tease and doubt of shelling ... Happy are those who lose imagination: They have enough to carry ammunition. Their spirit drags no pack. Their old wounds, save with cold, can not more ache. Having seen all things red, Their eyes are rid Of the hurt of the colour of blood for ever.

- Wilfred Owen, Insensibility

Quote of the Day

Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he That every man in arms should wish to be ... Who, with a natural instinct to discern What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn .. . More skillful in self-knowledge, even more pure, As tempted more: more able to endure, As more exposed to suffering and distress.

- William Wordsworth, "Character of the Happy Warrior"

An Arundel Tomb - Read by Philip Larkin

Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love. 

An Arundel Tomb - Philip Larkin

 Side by side, their faces blurred,
 The earl and countess lie in stone,
 Their proper habits vaguely shown
 As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
 And that faint hint of the absurd--
 The little dogs under their feet.

 Such plainess of the pre-baroque
 Hardly involves the eye, until
 It meets his left hand gauntlet, still
 Clasped empty in the other; and
 One sees, with sharp tender shock,
 His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.

 They would not think to lie so long.
 Such faithfulness in effigy
 Was just a detail friends could see:
 A sculptor's sweet comissioned grace
 Thrown off in helping to prolong
 The Latin names around the base.

 They would not guess how early in
 Their supine stationary voyage
 Their air would change to soundless damage,
 Turn the old tenantry away;
 How soon succeeding eyes begin
 To look, not read. Rigidly they

 Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
 Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
 Each summer thronged the grass. A bright
 Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
 Bone-riddled ground. And up the paths
 The endless altered people came,

 Washing at their identity.
 Now, helpless in the hollow of
 An unarmorial age, a trough
 Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
 Above their scrap of history,
 Only an attitude remains:

 Time has transfigured them into
 Untruth. The stone finality
 They hardly meant has come to be
 Their final blazon, and to prove
 Our almost-instinct almost true:
 What will survive of us is love.

- Philip Larkin