Time is an illusion

You are the future,
the red sky before sunrise
over the fields of time.

You are the cock’s crow when night is done,
You are the dew and the bells of matins,
maiden, stranger, mother, death.

You create yourself in ever-changing shapes
that rise from the stuff of our days –
unsung, unmourned, undescribed,
like a forest we never knew.

You are the deep innerness of all things,
the last word that can never be spoken.
To each of us you reveal yourself differently:
to the ship as coastline, to the shore as a ship.

– Rainer Maria Rilke

Wisdom

When I have ceased to break my wings
Against the faultiness of things,
And learned that compromises wait
Behind each hardly opened gate,
When I have looked Life in the eyes,
Grown calm and very coldly wise,
Life will have given me the Truth,
And taken in exchange — my youth.
– Sara Teasdale

Temporary Well Being

The pond is plenteous
The land is lush,
And having turned off the news
I am for the moment mellow.

With my book in one hand
And my drink in the other
What more could I want

But fame,
Better health,
And ten million dollars?

– Kenneth Burke

Not long ago, in a charming dream,
I saw myself — a king with crown’s treasure;
I was in love with you, it seemed,
And heart was beating with a pleasure.
I sang my passion’s song by your enchanting knees.
Why, dreams, you didn’t prolong my happiness forever?
But gods deprived me not of whole their favor:
I only lost the kingdom of my dreams.

–Alexander Pushkin

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

–William Carlos Williams

My writing is not worth two bits, and reading simple things like this, I understand why

Something I read over the weekend…

Where Everything Is Music

Don’t worry about saving these songs!
And if one of our instruments breaks,
it doesn’t matter.

We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.

The strumming and the flute notes
rise into the atmosphere,
and even if the whole world’s harp
should burn up, there will still be
hidden instruments playing.

So the candle flickers and goes out.
We have a piece of flint, and a spark.

This singing art is sea foam.
The graceful movements come from a pearl
somewhere on the ocean floor.

Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge
of driftwood along the beach, wanting!

They derive
from a slow and powerful root
that we can’t see.

Stop the words now.
Open the window in the center of your chest,
and let the spirits fly in and out.

-Jalaluddin Rumi

From time to time, I have these little meanders from reading prose – and jump over to a heavy dosage of poetry. Triggers were a series of bunched up depressing moments. But nowadays, the times – they are better .. and so is the associated poetry. Here’s one I was re-reading ..

A Psychological Tip

Whenever you’re called on to make up your mind,
and you’re hampered by not having any,
the best way to solve the dilemma, you’ll find,
is simply by spinning a penny.

No – not so that chance shall decide the affair
while you’re passively standing there moping;
but the moment the penny is up in the air,
you suddenly know what you’re hoping

–Piet Hein

From the HHGTTG,

“Forty-two!”; yelled Loonquawl. “Is that all you’ve got to show for seven and a half million years’ work?”
“I checked it very thoroughly,” said the computer, “and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that youve never actually known what the question is.”

From Matrix Revolutions,
“The purpose of all life is to end.”says Agent Smith

Wish I got answers like that for my questions…
Hmm, had said I’d post my reading list from the last 2 months – many are books I’m re-reading, some new…

The new Yahoo Messenger beta for win32 is weird. At times, it looks good, but at times, it acts up funny, like goes online-offline even when I’ve signed off…Its a beta after all