Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years,
Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe
Are brackish with the salt of human tears!
Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow
Claspest the limits of mortality!
And sick of prey, yet howling on for more,
Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore;
Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm,
Who shall put forth on thee,
Unfathomable Sea?
Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been afraid of making trouble?
george bernard shaw, PygMalion
Refrain from talk of others’ shortcomings; don’t rest on your strengths.
Thousand Character classic [千字文]
[罔谈彼短; 靡恃己长.]
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
george bernard shaw, Man and superman
A child is the most reliable measure of time. His daily growth is proof of your daily ageing and decline. The child’s gains are your losses, and the closer a child gets to anything, the farther you withdraw, as though you were tied to one another on opposite spokes of a wheel and the wheel, without your noticing it, turns. Dawn for the child is dusk for you.
Otar chiladze, A Man was going down the road
We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.
George bernard shaw, Pygmalion
Explosion in slow motion
Rocks the boats that line the ocean:
Swaying, swaying, they swing to and fro!
Metronomic masts set to tempo, s l o w.
downriver drift;
ferries & fisherman cross
without collision.
A screen of cloud veils the mountain,
And cold monkeys squawk from green pines.
Fungi abound, but seeds dormant,
Searching for sprouts -- alas, in vain.
Somewhere near there's a fairy cave
Where flutes and lutes are often played.
Its Way is overgrown with moss,
And the old stone gate yields no clue.
Where have all the fairy folk gone?
Looking back, there's an endless plain
Where flowers fall like streaming tears.
It's easy to grow old; Where is
the messenger to bring some news?
To tell who the Golden Phoenix charms?
Waking from a deep, restless dream
What remains are blooms on the stream.
my cave view:
fields and buildings;
what did cavemen see?
Mostly, the dead decay:
they crumble
or rot to goo.
But some trees
turn steely
hard & smooth --
fibers showing like
rigid sinews.
Bare of bark and leaves
and flowers,
but unyielding of
girth and substance.
But even those trees
give way --
perhaps in geologic time
rather than biologic time,
But still the tree will become
someone & something else.
chugging upriver,
past karst spires, the boaters’
time seems to slow.
Waking to a world in which
Space & Time misbehave:
Shapes slump,
Even melting into pools,
Oozing to flatness, then
Over the edge and
Into nowhere.
Time moves in riverine fashion:
Rushing in the chokepoints
And lazing in the wide plains.
Though still flowing
Inexorably and unidirectionally.
The illusion tries
To reveal itself,
But who can understand...
Tiger Riding for Beginners 