Loving Stars

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

- W.H.Auden 

A thousand roses, a little water

“People where you live," the little prince said, "grow five thousand roses in one garden... yet they don't find what they're looking for...

They don't find it," I answered.

And yet what they're looking for could be found in a single rose, or a little water..."

Of course," I answered.

And the little prince added, "But eyes are blind. You have to look with the heart.”

― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Fireflies

When death comes and whispers to me,
“Thy days are ended,”
let me say to him, “I have lived in love
and not in mere time.
…He will ask, “Will thy songs remain?”
I shall say, “I know not, but this I know
that often when I sang I found my eternity.

- Rabindranath Tagore

To Tea Cups

Petal by petal by Neha

The first cup moistens my lips and throat,
The second cup breaks my loneliness,
The third cup searches my barren entrails but to ,
find therein some five thousand volumes of odd ideographs.
The fourth cup raises a slight perspiration, - all
the wrong of life passes away through my pores.
At the fifth cup I am purified, the sixth cup calls me
to the realms of immortals.
The seventh cup-ah, but I could take no more! I only
feel the breath of cool wind that rises in my sleeves.
Where is Foraosan? Let me ride on this sweet breeze
and waft away thither.

- Lo Tung, Tang Dynasty