Meditation-Introspection &Poetry Entropy | 22 Oct 2007
Three Oddest Words
When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.
When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.
When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no nonbeing can hold.
- Wislawa Szymborska Polish Poet (Born July 1923)/Nobel Literature Prize 1996
Excerpt from her Nobel Lecture
December 1996
Poets, if they’re genuine, must also keep repeating “I don’t know.” Each poem marks an effort to answer this statement, but as soon as the final period hits the page, the poet begins to hesitate, starts to realize that this particular answer was pure makeshift that’s absolutely inadequate to boot. So the poets keep on trying, and sooner or later the consecutive results of their self-dissatisfaction are clipped together with a giant paperclip by literary historians and called their “oeuvre” …
The Poet and the World by Wislawa Szymborska
©THE NOBEL FOUNDATION 1996
on 24 Oct 2007 at 10:27 am 1.Nimesh Dadia said …
Dear lao Aju
Thus spake Wislawa, the oldest words of wisdom, the omnipresence of duality , the ever reigning contradictions of life, the BLISS of Nothingness or as they say in Sanskrit “Shunyata”
The concept of nothingness has been an integral part of most civilisations from the Hindus who called it Shunyata , the Greek Philosopher proclaimed towards the end of life that He knew Nothing, Arabs who alwasy refered to nothingess as “Sifar” and Jean Paul Sartre in his
acclaimed work dealing with the Modern Being’s Existential Angst or dillemas rather in Being and Nothingness.
“I Don’t Know” perhaps there is nothing to know. Perhaps one has to move Beyond Knowledge.
Xiao Nimesh
on 24 Oct 2007 at 11:25 am 2.Max Babi said …
Ajay.
This is a pithy and potent observation. By a coincident I came across this powerful observation today ” The joy is not in things. It is within us.” Richard Wagner.
Mavlana Rumi according to another friend, said the source is within us.
Oscar Wilde said : ‘God’s heaven and hell / in a tiny ivory cell…’ refering to the undeniable existence of the ‘source’ of joy or grief or any powerful emotion, all there in our mind.
Wislawa Szymborska connects the future to the past -how cyclic is life.
Precisely what T.S. Eliot spoke of so eloquently in
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
LITTLE GIDDING
(No. 4 of ‘Four Quartets’)
Well, all this zen-like meditation here makes me feel rumbles of a poem deep inside….and thanks a lot Ajay, for triggering off an inner avalanche !
Cheerz!
Max
on 24 Oct 2007 at 11:33 am 3.michele roohani said …
“What I say now may be elementary -
Once man unravels time and its mystery
We travel to the past by memory
Imagination’s what our future will be”
Je ‘ Free
on 24 Oct 2007 at 11:41 am 4.Entropy said …
Dear Friends
I m overwhelmed !! my gratitude…
on 26 Oct 2007 at 11:10 am 5.Nimesh Dadia said …
Dear Max Babi ( Guruji)
Your apt response to the the above poetry by quoting T.S.Eliot is like shooting at some one a quiver of arrows. Incredible.
Max, we await the upshot of your Inner valanche. I mean a poetry by yours truly.
Nimesh Dadia