satyam

satyam | 1 | January 10, 2009 at 10:57 pm | 22 views | NaachGaana Bol| Share

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   satyam 10 January 2009
   10:57:41 pm

   

   Satyam says:

   January 11, 2009 at 12:18 pm

   From Act 3, Scene 1 of Measure for Measure:

   Be absolute for death; either death or life
   Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life:
   If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing
   That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art,
   Servile to all the skyey influences,
   That dost this habitation, where thou keep’st,
   Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death’s fool;
   For him thou labour’st by thy flight to shun
   And yet runn’st toward him still. Thou art not noble;
   For all the accommodations that thou bear’st
   Are nursed by baseness. Thou’rt by no means valiant;
   For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork
   Of a poor worm. Thy best of rest is sleep,
   And that thou oft provokest; yet grossly fear’st
   Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself;
   For thou exist’st on many a thousand grains
   That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not;
   For what thou hast not, still thou strivest to get,
   And what thou hast, forget’st. Thou art not certain;
   For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,
   After the moon. If thou art rich, thou’rt poor;
   For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows,
   Thou bear’s thy heavy riches but a journey,
   And death unloads thee. Friend hast thou none;
   For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire,
   The mere effusion of thy proper loins,
   Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum,
   For ending thee no sooner. Thou hast nor youth nor age,
   But, as it were, an after-dinner’s sleep,
   Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth
   Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms
   Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich,
   Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty,
   To make thy riches pleasant. What’s yet in this
   That bears the name of life? Yet in this life
   Lie hid moe thousand deaths: yet death we fear,
   That makes these odds all even.

   but also:

   Late Ripeness

   Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year,
   I felt a door opening in me and I entered
   the clarity of early morning.

   One after another my former lives were departing,
   like ships, together with their sorrow.

   And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas
   assigned to my brush came closer,
   ready now to be described better than they were before.

   I was not separated from people,
   grief and pity joined us.
   We forget – I kept saying – that we are all children of the King.

   For where we come from there is no division
   into Yes and No, into is, was, and will be.

   We were miserable, we used no more than a hundredth part
   of the gift we received for our long journey.

   Moments from yesterday and from centuries ago -
   a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes before a mirror
   of polished metal, a lethal musket shot, a caravel
   staving its hull against a reef – they dwell in us,
   waiting for a fulfillment.

   I knew, always, that I would be a worker in the vineyard,
   as are all men and women living at the same time,
   whether they are aware of it or not.

   Czeslaw Milosz

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