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From the book 'Grooks'
by Piet Hein |
Hint and Suggestion
(Admonitory grook addressed to youth)
The human spirit sublimates
and impulses it thwarts;
a healthy sex life mitigates
the lust for other sports.
Dream Interpretation
(Simplified)
Everything's either
concave or vex,
so whatever you dream
will be something with sex.
Lilac Time
The lilacs are flowering, sweet and sublime
with a perfume that goes to the head;
and loves meander, in prose and rhyme,
trying to say-
for the thousandth time-
what's easier done than said.
Experts
Experts have
their expert fun
ex cathedra
telling one
just how nothing
can be done.
Atomyriades
Nature, it seems, is the popular name
for milliards and milliards and milliards
of particles playing their infinite game
of billiards and billiards and billiards.
The Road to Wisdom
The road to wisdom? Well, it's plain
and simple to express:
err
and err
and err again
but less
and less
and less.
That is the Question
(Hamlet anno domini)
Coexistence
or no existence.
More Haste
(Inscription for a monument
at the crossroads)
Here lies, extinguished in his prime,
a victim of modernity,
but yesterday he hadn't time-
and now he has eternity.
Grook on Long-Winded Authors
Long-winded writers I abhor,
and glib, prolific chatters:
give me the ones who tear and gnaw
their hair and pens to tatters;
who find their writing such a chore
they only write what matters.
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By John Allemang |
To watch the great Lance Armstrong ride,
Must we ask what he's trying to hide,
And tell ourselves the human race
Can't keep up with his wicked pace?
To hear the boos and read the taunts
Inscribed along the Tour de France,
You'd think the man who outduels time
Had just pulled off the perfect crime,
As if a climb beyond compare
Were conjured from the Alps' thin air.
Each time he wins, the whispers start,
That Lance's cold and sullen art
Is crafted in a doctor's lab,
Which makes each race a snatch and grab,
A hero's triumph of the will,
With needles to subdue each hill.
It may be true. It may not be.
But fixed on that, we will not see
The tortured beauty of the Tour,
The moment when men know for sure
That choosing this inhuman ride
Means swearing off their human side,
And what the lifeless world calls sane
Will never match the joy of pain.
Sure, TV shows us Sheryl Crow
Attending to her Texas beau,
And for a moment we'll pretend
That Lance is everybody's friend.
Make no mistake: We're not alike
Once Armstrong climbs aboard his bike --
As mountains bend to each gear's shift,
So standards change and values drift.
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Three more poems from the great Mary Oliver, who would get my vote for America's Poet Laureate, if such a position existed. |
A Bitterness
I believe you did not have a happy life.
I believe you were cheated.
I believe your best friends were loneliness and misery.
I believe your busiest enemies were anger and depression.
I believe joy was a game you could never play without stumbling.
I believe comfort, though you craved it, was forever a stranger.
I believe music had to be melancholy or not at all.
I believe no trinket, no precious metal, shone so bright as your bitterness.
I believe you lay down at last in your coffin none the wiser and unassuaged.
Oh, cold and dreamless under the wild, amoral, reckless, peaceful flowers of the hillsides.
 The Sun
Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful
than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon
and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone--
and how it slides again
out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower
streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance--
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love--
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure
that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you
as you stand there,
empty-handed--
or have you too
turned from this world--
or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?
 Sunrise
You can
die for it--
an idea,
or the world. People
have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound
to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. But
this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought
of China,
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun
blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises
under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?
What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it
whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.
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By Martin Collis |
Should one fight it, stifle it,
or try to disregard it?
Should windows be open or closed?
What pills should be swallowed,
if any at all?
Will Aspirins help
or will they but serve to prolong
this state of semi-health?
What does one do in this no-man's land
between sickness and well-being?
The symptoms of sickness dance menacingly
in every part of the body,
and yet the thermometer, that infallible health barometer,
shows ninety-eight point six degrees.
One knows not whether to be angry or pleased.
Pleased at apparent normalcy,
angry that one isn't normal,
and that the column of mercury cannot record
the intangibles of illness.
Gargling might help; at least it can't do any harm.
The same applies to vitamins.
One only has to look around,
and vitamins can soon be found
in half filled bottles colored brown,
from which the labels have come adrift.
Leaving one to wonder if it's A, B, C
or permutations of any three
that one is to consume.
Vitamin C is supposed to be
the one to protect you from colds.
But does age destroy its potency?
For these vitamins are old.
Feed a cold and starve a fever,
so says the maxim,
and yet one has no hunger.
Should one go to work tomorrow
and cough and sneeze one's weary way
through a never ending day
and attempt to earn one's pay
by passing the cold on
to all who fall within one's orbit?
That would be the act of an irrational man,
yet to stay away would be to earn censure
from workmates and employers alike.
What should be the highest praise
in fact is a most damning phrase.
Mrs. So and So always stays at home
when she has a cold.
How a cold forces you into the present all the time.
There's little escape into reflection or distractions
or even in sleep.
Brief flights of fancy are always cut short
by a pain in the head or by coughing.
The cold becomes the centre of one's universe.
Are the symptoms multiplying or declining?
Can one, Canute-like, hold them back?
'To take arms against a sea of troubles
and by opposing, end them.'
Perhaps this time it isn't just a cold,
perhaps it's 'flu' or something worse.
Could that coughing be significant?
The answer, of course, is 'no'.
It's just a physical disequilibrium acting on the mind,
which seems to find it's only escape from present discomfort
in images of greater maladies.
How can one read a book when breathing is a conscious act?
And, when attempts to clear ones nose by vigorous blowing
only initiate earache and a sense of frustration.
If only a cold was more circumscribed,
instead of being so all embracing.
Throat, ears, head, lungs are all affected
and every limb seems twice its normal weight.
A billion dollars and a Nobel Prize awaits the person
who can create a foolproof cure for the common cold.
And yet the cure is not forthcoming.
Part of the problem lies
in the indecisive nature of the disease.
What is a 'cold' in the layman's eyes
covers many maladies.
The researchers in Salisbury speak
of a spectrum of colds
and use letters and numerals
to indicate its many splendored forms.
Colds are not caught by getting wet,
by sitting in drafts,
by creating a sweat,
though one rather wishes they were,
for it's easy to blame
being caught in the rain
and satisfying to a degree.
But to be struck down
by an unidentified streptococci
or virus is somehow humiliating.
And when one recovers
one is merely waiting
to be struck down again.
One must be positive
and try to find a redeeming feature
where none seems to be found.
God moves in a mysterious way,
so religious people say.
Did God create the cold?
Was the Almighty responsible
for the vapor rubs and patent potions
and cough syrups in turgid oceans,
for Kleenex tissues,
colored pills designed to cure a thousand ills,
for gargles, nose drops and inhalers
sold for profit by retailers.
Never has so much been sold to so many for so little result.
And yet all things are relative.
Without sickness how could we appreciate health?
Maybe it's a function of the cold
to occasionally invade our physical fortress
and declare a minor war
that peace might be enjoyed the more.
Now one can project and see
how wonderful that time will be,
when one can smell the fragrance of a flower,
breath without effort, swallow with no pain.
When sensations are defined and clear
to really see and taste and hear,
to climb out from the pit of pain,
to live and be alive again.
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