Poetic Wisdom

DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO
THAT GOOD NIGHT

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas

You Will Not Mourn

You will not mourn the burning or the slaying
As that Sun is your life sustaining;
And he who is entangled in being
Is trapped, unheeding as he is unseeing.

Fariduddin Attar

A man shows intelligence by his forebearance;
It is his glory when he overlooks an offense.

Proverbs 19: 11

What Happens To a Dream Deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-
And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-
like a syrup sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy loda.

Or does it explode?

Langston Hughes

Only that shall happen
Which has happened

Ecclesiastes 1:9

My fleeting life has come and gone

My fleeting life has come and gone
A wind that blows and passes by.
I feel it has been all too brief,
Just like the blinking of an eye.

To this true word God will attest:
The Spirit is the Body's guest,
Some day it will vacate the breast
As birds, freed from their cages, fly.

Life, my good man, can be likened
To the land that the farmer sows:
Lying scattered all over the soil,
Some of the seeds sprout, but some die.

If you visit and give water
To a sick man who needs care,
With God's wine, he shall hail you there
One day when you soar to the sky.

Yunus Emre (1238-1320)
Turkey

WHISPERS OF LOVE

Lover whispers to my ear,

“Better to be a prey than a hunter.

Make yourself My fool.

Stop trying to be the sun and become a speck!

Dwell at My door and be homeless.

Don’t pretend to be a candle, be a moth,

so you may taste the savor of Life

and know the power hidden in serving.”

Mathnawi V. 411-414 (translated by Kabir Helminski)

The Rumi Collection, Edited by Kabir Helminski

—Rumi