Are these testing times,
Or is this an Act of Providence?
We know what our losses are;
Will we be able to see our gains?
Or, will all questions
Of loss and gain lose relevance?
With the discovery of new values
Will old denominations vanish?
Will our houses now become homes;
Will our hearths now warm our hearts?
Will social distancing
Re-acquaint us with each other?
Will we learn in isolation
What good company is all about?
Will we remember over time
This spring that renewed us all?
Allow time
To take you on a walk
To give your thoughts
A duration.
See yourself
Let go of ideas
And stand free of
Their certainties.
Definitions too
Are not permanent
Love has revealed to me
Other meanings.
The future
Becomes less important;
Plans and designs get replaced
By responses.
Today’s importance
Is self-evident…intrinsic;
Small matters that suggest
Little matters.
Say a prayer
Wash your hands and stay in
Apparently, that’s a good way to end
A pandemic.
And what does today say?
…the unfolding of light
….the repetition of rituals
….the memory of yesterday
Moments left behind
Moments arrived at…
All indicate two points in a continuum.
Let me pause.
Watch change happen…
Let me see time
Work its artistry
How will things be today?
What will lose its charm for me?
What will I begin to wonder?
Men of free will
They think they know
But true intelligence
Stands on the fine edge
Between light and shadow.
A man is not easily made.
To sink in pleasures
To be drunk with excess
Is like standing
In the midst of sobriety
In a vulgar dress.
A man is not easily made.
His possessions may give him
An air so select
But value is not
A measure of expenditure
It’s the arc of a discerning intellect.
A man is not easily made.
Has he learnt the art
Of keeping centred his private mind?
Towards his friends
And towards his foes
Is he equally kind?
A man is not easily made.
For a man to become
He must know how to be
Measured in appearance
But immeasurable
In depth and potentiality.
A man is not easily made.
.
To make,
To fashion is
To give appearance
To that which had existence
But not a life.
To make or fashion
A thing,
Is to simultaneously
Make or fashion
The maker.
The made
Is like the born
It will live amongst us
And alter our lives
In some or the other way.
The made
And the maker
Are of value
Not for the profits they supply
But for the stories they create.
Because when the made
And their makers are gone
All that is left behind
Is the memory
Of how things were.
When we walked
Down Memory Lane
We travelled back in time…
We relived in our minds
Those moments
That we had left behind.
Memories fill you up…
The present, vis-à-vis
Stands before you
As an emptiness
Your time was shared
And in that sharing love grew…
But remembering
Is a solitary thing…
Your ‘now’ challenges
Who you claim to be
It reminds you about
All that you’ve lost to time…
Your temporariness
Is hard to deal with
The weight of the present
Displaces your past…
You’ve left behind all
That promised to belong to you.
Yet you continue
To hold on to-
The sounds, the smells, the voices,
The laughter, the events, the sentiment…
All that was; none that is
Except in the echoes down Memory Lane.
.
Thoughts like turbulences
Are pure feeling.
They often lack the language
And the voice to express
Their agitation.
Your reasoning
Doesn’t pacify them.
On the contrary,
It renders them as
Absurdities and incongruities.
To belittle something
As primal as feeling
Is to be arrogant
Of a contrived knowledge
It is to be disinterested in the truth.
Time
Be gentle
To innocence that
Fails to see the virtue
In simply being.
Our hearts break too easily.
Our pride instantly dissolves in shame.
Our faith gets convicted by belief
And is then ever afraid to be free.
We insulate ourselves in hard coverings…
We become what we are
Never meant to be.
We seek a happiness
That flowed away with our tears
And then dried up.
Time
Be gentle
Teach us how to recognise
That eternal source of love-
The love that is unconditional
In its presence
we are just what we are…
Pretence is not a need
And becoming is not a band-aid
For a wounded innocence.
To see beauty
Is to awaken
To all that is.
Beauty is not
A matter of judgement
But of absorption.
After all,
You cannot seize something
That grips you.
In the presence of beauty
The mind is silenced;
At her altar, all the senses kneel.
You stand there-
Feeling privileged,
Feeling blessed.
She won’t be spoken to;
There’s nothing
That you can say to her.
Silence becomes
The expression of your awe
And wonder.
Your words
Can’t describe her
For she is pure essence.
Not this, not that
Not this way
Not that way.
She can’t be drawn
Or designed
Or sculpted.
You can find her
Only when
You are immersed in her.
Good taste
Is born out of refinement;
Out of a refusal
To vulgarize life and
To appropriate it for pleasure.
We live confused lives
Scripted by our fickle ignorance
Our beliefs are misguided
Our values, misplaced
Our philosophy, arrogant.
We buy to own
We earn money to buy
We work to earn money
In this organization of our time
Much is lost.
What if you reminded yourself
Life is a gift to be valued
Not a pseudo poverty
Needing pseudo alleviation.
All vulgarity would be transformed…
What could entice man
If he cares not for money
And has not mortgaged his time?
And has understood that
To love is his essential responsibility.
To simply be is humility
To be engaged, but not tied
To be essential
Not excessive…
Good taste is good judgment.
Wit. Wisdom. Wonder... 