Whoever you are

Whirling dervishes by Alison Wiklund

Come, come, whoever you are,
Wanderer, idolater, worshiper of fire,
Come even though you have broken your vows a thousand times,
Come, and come yet again.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.

- Rumi

Secrets

“I think books should have secrets, like people do. I think they should be there as a bonus for the sensitive reader or there as a kind of subliminal quavering. I don’t think that the duty of the twentieth-century fiction writer is to retell old stories only.”

—John Updike

Requiem for a Friend

La Gerbe by Henri Matisee

For this is wrong, if anything is wrong:
not to enlarge the freedom of a love
with all the inner freedom one can summon.
We need, in love, to practice only this:
letting each other go. For holding on
comes easily; we do not need to learn it.

-from Requiem for a Friend, Rainer Maria Rilke

The Coming Of Wisdom With Time

Paysage by Joan Miro

THOUGH leaves are many, the root is one;
Through all the lying days of my youth
I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;
Now I may wither into the truth.

- W. B. Yeats

चलो फिर से मुस्कुराएँ

Engraved by Neha

चलो फिर से मुस्कुराएँ 

चलो फिर से दिल जलाएं 

जो गुज़र गयी हैं रातें 

उन्हें फिर जगा के लायें 

जो बिसर गयीं हैं बातें 

उन्हें याद से बुलाएं 

चलो फिर से दिल जलाएं 

चलो फिर से मुस्कुराएँ 

किसी शह-नशी पे झलकी 

वो धनक किसी कबा की 

किसी रग की कसमसाई 

वो कसक किसी अदा की 

कोई हर्फे-बे-मुरब्बत 

किसी कुंजे-लब से फूटा 

वो झनक के शीशा-ए-दिल 

तहे-बाम फिर से टूटा 

ये मिलन की, नामिलन की 

ये लगन की और जलन की 

जो सही हैं वारदातें 

जो गुज़र गयी हैं रातें 

जो बिसर गई हैं बातें 

कोई उनकी धुन बनाएं 

कोई इनका गीत गाएँ

चलो फिर से मुस्कुराएँ 

चलो फिर से दिल जलाएं 

- फैज़  अहमद  फैज़  

Word Key - शह-नशी : a higher place to sit, कबा : vest, हर्फे-बे-मुरब्बत : heartless, तहे-बाम : under the high tower 

Failing and Flying

Bird in Space by Constantin Brancusi

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was 
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars 
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say 
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

- Jack Gilbert


Notes: In Greek mythology, Icarus is the son of the master craftsman Daedalus. The main story told about Icarus is his attempt to escape from Crete by means of wings that his father constructed from feathers and wax. He ignored instructions not to fly too close to the sun, and the melting wax caused him to fall into the sea where he drowned. Read more here.

To His Coy Mistress

Resting Woman Wearing Tiara by Henri Matisse

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
        
But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.
       
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run. 

- Andrew Marvell

Ode on Melancholy

The Old Tower in the Fields by Vincent Van Gogh

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
       Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd
       By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
               Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
       Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
               Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;
       For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
               And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

But when the melancholy fit shall fall
       Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
       And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
       Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
               Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
       Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
               And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;
       And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
       Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
       Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
               Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
       Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shalt taste the sadness of her might,
               And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

- John Keats 


Notes:
1) In Classical Greek, the word Lethe literally means "oblivion", "forgetfulness", or "concealment". 
2) For a deeper understanding of the poem, read more here.