"Pleasant places" [rubaiyat]
Beloved! I'm mired in living's deep aggravation
high mountain! I'm tired of climbing's steep aggravation
dark marketplace! must one engage in your weary charade?
Ardeo! I'm ired by haggling's cheap aggravation
It had seemed for a time that freedom one could achieve
it had seemed for a time that trouble could find reprieve
where a day late & a dollar short grow too habitual
it may seem for a time that none know how you may grieve
The sandbox & the grave are both pleasant places
the monarch & the slave have both pleasant faces
the teeter-totter of life is a rollicking playground!
damnation & heaven are both pleasant spaces
From my toddling days till the time I can crawl no longer
could the world & its ways delight & appall no longer?
from the morning of "Be!" till the curtain descends on the stage
could confusion & praise upset & enthrall no longer?
posted by david raphael israel at 8:40 PM
2 Comments:
mmm where did this come from di?
delicate, yet far more... disturbed... searching. And such.
P.
It's a form and style (& mode of thought / feeling / expression) I return to periodically; it's not new, simply a further handful. But there's not a whole lot of it on this blog -- some scattered a bit. (Much in this mode I was writing in pre-blog months.) But the ideas are, in a sense, conventional -- though in this world not everyone cultivates the same conventions of ideas. ;-)
Omar Khayyam's rubaiyat to some degree stands behind some of this. But note -- of course the particular expression (what images, etc.) also emerge from contours of the language (to a degree).
(The first rubai here I composed amid my solitary late-afternoon sauna.)
However, it's true enough there's an undercurrent of overall fed-upness that's given voice.
well noted
cheers,
d.i.
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