If you want a thing bad enough
To go out and fight for it,
Work day and night for it,
Give up your time and your peace and your sleep for it,
If only desire of it
Makes you quite mad enough
Never to tire of it,
Makes you hold all other things tawdry and cheap for it,
If life seems all empty and useless without it
And all that you scheme and you dream is about it,
If gladly you'll sweat for it,
Fret for it,
Plan for it,
Lose all your terror of GOD or of man for it,
If you'll simply go after the thing that you want,
With all your capacity,
Strength and sagacity,
Faith, hope and confidence, stern pertinacity,
If neither cold poverty, famished and gaunt,
Nor sickness nor pain
Of body or brain
Can turn you away from the thing that you want,
If dogged and grim you besiege and beset it,
YOU'LL GET IT.

My prime of youth is but a front of cares,
My feast of joy is but a dish of pain,
My crop of corn is but a field of tares,
And all my good is but vain hope of gain;
The day is past, and yet I saw no sun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

My tale was heard and yet it was not told,
My fruit is fallen and my leaves are green,
My youth is spent and yet I am not old,
I saw the work and yet I was not seen;
My thread is cut and yet it is not spun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

I sought my death and found it in my womb,
I looked for life and saw it was a shade,
I trod the earth and knew it was my tomb,
And now I die, and now I was but made;
My glass is full, and now my glass is run,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

Under the big 500-watted lamps, in the huge sawdusted
      government inspected slaughter-house,
head down from hooks and clamps, run on trolleys over troughs,
the animals die.
Whatever terror their dull intelligences feel
      or what agony distorts their most protruding eyes
the incommunicable narrow skulls conceal.
      Across the sawdusted floor,
ignorant as children, they see the butcher's slow
      methodical approach
in the bloodied apron, leather cap above, thick square shoes
      below,
struggling to comprehend this unique vision upside down,
and then approximate a human scream
      as from the throat slit like a letter
the blood empties, and the windpipe, like a blown valve,
      spurts steam.
But I, sickened equally with the ox and lamb,
      misread my fate.
mistake the butcher's love
      who kills me for the meat I am
to feed a hungry multitude beyond the sliding doors.
      I, too, misjudge the real
purpose of this huge shed I'm herded in: not for my love
      or lovely wool am I here,
but to make some world a meal.
      See, how on the unsubstantial air
I kick, bleating my private woe,
      as upside down my rolling sight
somersaults, and frantically I try to set my world upright;
      too late learning why I'm hung here,
whose nostrils bleed, whose life runs out from eye and ear.

I couldn't touch a stop and turn a screw,
      And set the blooming world a-work for me,
Like such as cut their teeth – I hope, like you –
      On the handle of a skeleton gold key;
I cut mine on a leek, which I eat it every week:
      I'm a clerk at thirty bob as you can see.

But I don't allow it's luck and all a toss;
      There's no such thing as being starred and crossed;
It's just the power of some to be a boss,
      And the bally power of others to be bossed:
I face the music, sir; you bet I ain't a cur;
      Strike me lucky if I don't believe I'm lost!

For like a mole I journey in the dark,
      A-travelling along the underground
From my Pillar'd Halls and broad Suburban Park,
      To come the daily dull official round;
And home again at night with my pipe all alight,
      A-scheming how to count ten bob a pound.

And it's often very cold and very wet,
      And my missus stitches towels for a hunks;
And the Pillar'd Halls is half of it to let –
      Three rooms about the size of travelling trunks.
And we cough, my wife and I, to dislocate a sigh,
      When the noisy little kids are in their bunks.

But you never hear her do a growl or whine,
      For she's made of flint and roses, very odd;
And I've got to cut my meaning rather fine,
      Or I'd blubber, for I'm made of greens and sod:
So p'r'haps we are in Hell for all that I can tell,
      And lost and damn'd and served up hot to God.

I ain't blaspheming, Mr. Silver-tongue;
      I'm saying things a bit beyond your art:
Of all the rummy starts you ever sprung,
      Thirty bob a week's the rummiest start!
With your science and your books and your the'ries about spooks,
      Did you ever hear of looking in your heart?

I didn't mean your pocket, Mr., no:
      I mean that having children and a wife,
With thirty bob on which to come and go,
      Isn't dancing to the tabor and the fife:
When it doesn't make you drink, by Heaven! it makes you think,
      And notice curious items about life.

I step into my heart and there I meet
      A god-almighty devil singing small,
Who would like to shout and whistle in the street,
      And squelch the passers flat against the wall;
If the whole world was a cake he had the power to take,
      He would take it, ask for more, and eat them all.

And I meet a sort of simpleton beside,
      The kind that life is always giving beans;
With thirty bob a week to keep a bride
      He fell in love and married in his teens:
At thirty bob he stuck; but he knows it isn't luck:
      He knows the seas are deeper than tureens.

And the god-almighty devil and the fool
      That meet me in the High Street on the strike,
When I walk about my heart a-gathering wool,
      Are my good and evil angels if you like.
And both of them together in every kind of weather
      Ride me like a double-seated bike.

That's rough a bit and needs its meaning curled.
      But I have a high old hot un in my mind –
A most engrugious notion of the world,
      That leaves your lightning 'rithmetic behind:
I give it at a glance when I say "There ain't no chance,
      Nor nothing of the lucky-lottery kind."

And it's this way that I make it out to be:
      No fathers, mothers, countries, climates – none;
Not Adam was responsible for me,
      Nor society, nor systems, nary one:
A little sleeping seed, I woke – I did, indeed –
      A million years before the blooming sun.

I woke because I thought the time had come;
      Beyond my will there was no other cause;
And everywhere I found myself at home,
      Because I chose to be the thing I was;
And in whatever shape of mollusc or of ape
      I always went according to the laws.

I was the love that chose my mother out;
      I joined two lives and from the union burst;
My weakness and my strength without a doubt
      Are mine alone for ever from the first:
It's just the very same with a difference in the name
      As "Thy will be done." You say it if you durst!

They say it daily up and down the land
      As easy as you take a drink, it's true;
But the difficultest go to understand,
      And the difficultest job a man can do,
Is to come it brave and meek with thirty bob a week,
      And feel that that's the proper thing for you.

It's a naked child against a hungry wolf;
      It's playing bowls upon a splitting wreck;
It's walking on a string across a gulf
      With millstones fore-and-aft about your neck;
But the thing is daily done by many and many a one;
      And we fall, face forward, fighting, on the deck.

Inside this clay jug
there are canyons and
pine mountains,
and the maker of canyons
and pine mountains!

All seven oceans are inside,
and hundreds of millions of stars.

The acid that tests gold is here,
and the one who judges jewels.

And the music
that comes from the strings
that no one touches,
and the source of all water.

If you want the truth, I will tell you the truth:
Friend, listen: the God whom I love is inside.

*

~ Robert Bly version, from Kabir:Ecstatic
Poems (Amazon link). See a video clip of
Bly reading this poem.

Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
    And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me;
Here he lies where he longed to be,
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
    And the hunter home from the hill.

*

Stevenson lived the last of his 44
years in Samoa. The "Requiem"
was engraved on his tombstone, as
he wished. He was revered by the
Samoans, and the poem was trans-
lated to a Samoan song of grief,
which is well known and still
sung in Samoa according to his
Wikipedia biography.

    The joy is not the end-in-itself to be sought.
    Seek Me first, and then My Knowledge and My Joy will also be thine.
    Seek Me for My own sake and not for any ulterior motive.
    I and I alone am the worthy end of all endeavor.
    So lay down all for Me, and My Wealth will be thy wealth, My Power
thy power, My Joy thy joy, My Wisdom thy wisdom.
    This universe is but a part of My Treasure, and it, with vastly greater
Riches, shall be the portion of the Inheritance of all those who come to Me.
    Long have ye lingered in the desert of Ignorance.
    I desire not thy continued suffering.
    Come unto Me. The Way is not so hard.

*

… I have sought this Awakening for several years. I was finally convinced
that, at least in all probability, there was such a thing or event, while I was
in the midst of the discussions of a metaphysical seminary held at Harvard
[when he was a grad student in mathematics there]. I saw, at once, that if
such Knowledge were an actuality it was of far greater importance than even
the greatest intellectual achievement within the limits of the subject-object
field…. My final word on this particular subject is: I sought a Goal the
existence of which I had become convinced was highly probable. I
succeeded in finding this Goal, and now I KNOW, and can also say to all
others: "IT IS ABSOLUTELY WORTH ANYTHING THAT IT MAY
COST, AND IMMEASURABLY MORE." ~ Pathways Through to Space

"The Apple"
Carillon : Poems, Essays, and
Philosophy of Richard Rose

I am an apple
Round and red, bursting with Love.
Beautiful with the artistry of ages.
Once hard and insensible, yes –
Green and bitter with ignorance,
But now soft and mellow,
Sweet to the joys of life,
Soft to the mouth of love,
Mellow to the harsher hand of Fate.
Perfect is my noon-day bliss . . . .
And time holds the glad sun still
For a long, dreamy summer's day,
Until I drink a song into my heart,
And feel within me glorious beginnings,
Seeds of perfection . . . .
Straining and exulting.

*

Above is the first stanza. See the
complete poem in the TAT Forum
archive. The apple blossom struggles
to open, seeking the warmth of the
sun's love. The fruit searches for
its meaning, eventually releasing its
seeds. The seed in turn struggles to
burst open for its creator's love. We
are parts of the heliotropic creation,
seeking our creator's warmth and love.