True freedom
Why qualify?
Is there such
A big thing as
False freedom
Like any illusion
Right and wrong
Or just whatever
One makes of it
Twists ‘nd turns
Until it may fit
For one or all
One’s illusion
All is freedom
To take some
Honest effort
For tuning in
Gradually
Ever more
In time here
In space now
Consciousness
So being soul
In the human
Body ‘nd mind
Welcome thus
To this species
On our planet
Free to love!
“Pebbles in the pond” — a touch of a raga
A brief for the defense — wood and fire
“Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything…”
“We think the fire eats the wood. We are wrong. The wood reaches out to the flame. The fire licks at what the wood harbors, and the wood gives itself away to that intimacy, the manner in which we and the world meet each new day.”
— from Refusing Heaven: Poems and Collected Poems by Jack Gilbert, Goodreads.com
Biting or chewing through obstacles to true freedom
