Love Will Remain My Master

Love Will Remain My Master

I promised you
I'd disappear in five minutes
without a place to go?
the rain still sheeting in the streets
no place of refuge anywhere?
The city's coffee bars define boredom,
where shall I embark on my own?
when you are the sea
the sails
and the journey
Is it possible for me to stay
another ten minutes
till the rain stops?
It's certain that I'll depart
after the clouds move on
and after the winds abate
Otherwise, I shall remain your guest
until morning.


Nizar Qabbani

Translated by L Jayyusi and J Reed

"It's so long since I've had sex, I've forgotten who ties up whom." .. Joan Rivers

Kerouac

How to Meditate

-lights out-
fall, hands a-clasped, into instantaneous
ecstasy like a shot of heroin or morphine,
the gland inside of my brain discharging
the good glad fluid (Holy Fluid) as
i hap-down and hold all my body parts
down to a deadstop trance-Healing
all my sicknesses-erasing all-not
even the shred of a “I-hope-you” or a
Loony Balloon left in it, but the mind
blank, serene, thoughtless. When a thought
comes a-springing from afar with its held-
forth figure of image, you spoof it out,
you spuff it off, you fake it, and
it fades, and thought never comes-and
with joy you realize for the first time
“thinking’s just like not thinking-
So I don’t have to think
any
more”

Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose garden.
-TS Eliot, Four Quartets, "Burnt Norton"

Bertrand Russell

'The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.'