Dedication - Czeslaw Milosz

You whom I could not save

Listen to me.

Try to understand this simple speech as I would be ashamed of another.

I swear, there is in me no wizardry of words.

I speak to you with silence like a cloud or a tree.
What strengthened me, for you was lethal.

You mixed up farewell to an epoch with the beginning of a new one,

Inspiration of hatred with lyrical beauty,

Blind force with accomplished shape.
Here is the valley of shallow Polish rivers.

And an immense bridge

Going into white fog. Here is a broken city,

And the wind throws the screams of gulls on your grave

When I am talking with you.
What is poetry which does not save

Nations or people?

A connivance with official lies,

A song of drunkards whose throats will be cut in a moment,

Readings for sophomore girls.

That I wanted good poetry without knowing it,

That I discovered, late, its salutary aim,

In this and only this I find salvation.
They used to pour millet on graves or poppy seeds

To feed the dead who would come disguised as birds.

I put this book here for you, who once lived

So that you should visit us no more.

Hold my hand...

Little girl and her father were crossing a bridge.The father was kind of scared so he asked his little daughter,"Sweetheart, please hold my hand so that you don't fall into the river."The little girl said, "No, Dad. You hold my hand.""What's the difference?" Asked the puzzled father."There's a big difference," replied the little girl."If I hold your hand and something happens to me,chances are that I may let your hand go.But if you hold my hand, I know for sure that no matter what happens,you will never let my hand go."

In any relationship, the essence of trust is not in its bind, but in its bond.

John Ashbery

Alone with our madness and favorite flower

We see that there really is nothing left to write about.

Or rather, it is necessary to write about the same old things

In the same way, repeating the same things over and over

For love to continue and be gradually different.
Beehives and ants have to be re-examined eternally

And the color of the day put in

Hundreds of times and varied from summer to winter

For it to get slowed down to the pace of an authentic Saraband

and huddle there, alive and resting.
Only then can the chronic inattention

Of our lives drape itself around us, conciliatory

And with one eye on those long tan plush shadows

That speak so deeply into our unprepared knowledge

Of ourselves, the talking engines of our day.

Khwaja Abdullah Ansari

O you who have departed from your own self,

and who have not yet reached the Friend:

do not be sad, for He

is accompanying you in each of your breaths.

Way of The Sufi-Idries Shah

You probably seem to yourself to be a believer, even if you are a believer in disbelief.
But you cannot really believe in anything until you are aware of the process by which you arrived at your position.
Before you do this, you must be ready to postulate that all your beliefs may be wrong, that what you think to be belief may only be a variety of prejudice caused by your surroundings - including the bequest of your ancestors for whom you may have a sentiment.
True belief belongs to the realm of real knowledge.
Until you have knowledge, belief is mere coalesced opinions, however it may seem to you.
Coalesced opinions serve for ordinary living.

Real belief enables higher studies to be made.

Attributed to Hazrat Ali(AS)

Rumi

Little by little, wean yourself.

This is the gist of what I have to say.
From an embryo, whose nourishment comes in the blood,

move to an infant drinking milk,

to a child on solid food,

to a searcher after wisdom,

to a hunter of more invisible game.
Think how it is to have a conversation with an embryo.

You might say, "The world outside is vast and intricate.

There are wheatfields and mountain passes,and orchards in bloom.
At night there are millions of galaxies, and in sunlight

the beauty of friends dancing at a wedding."
You ask the embryo why he, or she, stays cooped up

in the dark with eyes closed.


Listen to the answer.

There is no "other world."

I only know what I've experienced.

You must be hallucinating.