A SERIES OF PHILOSOPHICAL VERSES
By Keith R (Bob) Perry
COPYRIGHT © 1973
Published and printed by:
Keith Robert (Bob) Perry
2/31 Wansfell St
Picnic Bay
Queensland 4819
AUSTRALIA
Each verse is a separate unit. It is written with a philosophical theme and the entire work is linked with this common thread.
Each verse is loosely adapted from the 19th century work of Edward Fitzgerald’s 5th translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
Omar Khayyam was a 12th century Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer.
He invented the Arabic calendar.
INDEX
4...Good Morning
6...Peace of Mind
7...Desert Snow
8...The Loveliest and the Best
9...Priests and Doctors
10...Sir! My Glass is Empty
11...Gently Brother
12...Change of Heart
13..Roses and Thorns
14..Happiness and Leisure
15..Understanding
16..The Loves of My Life
17..Fate
18..The Purpose?
19..The Light?
20..Would He Break the Cup?
21..Could God Make a Mistake?
22..Just What the Publican Ordered
23..Would the Moonlight Help?
24..Without End
GOOD MORNING
Arise, a new day is dawning and
The stars of night have gone:
The sky has turned from red to blue
And it’s a new day.
A little after the crack of dawn
I thought I heard a lost soul crying.
The world is preparing for another day.
Why be drowsy – welcome the morning.
And for all the lovers of today,
“Open the curtains of your mind,
And let the morning sun shine in.
Who knows, it may be too late tomorrow.
Remember the loves of yesterday?
They put their souls to rest
Where the beautiful flowers in the garden grow-
There are the lovers of yesterday.
4
PEACE OF MIND
There is that happy medium
Where serenity fills the soul,
Where the rich in love and the poor in spirit
Will be offered peace of mind.
With a favourite CD in the shade of a flowering tree
A bottle to drink and a chicken to eat,
And you and I to enjoy the tranquillity.
Would we not call this Paradise.
Politicians and pop-stars ive in glory.
Religious leaders offer a Paradise to come.
Enjoy what you have – not what they promise,
And don’t fight another man’s war.
A person who is rich in inner beauty says,
“I offer you a share of my happiness,
It is within your reach-
Help me spread it like seeds in the wind.”
Farmers who real riches from the soil
And those who help to cultivate it,
Turn to the bounty of Mother Nature
With hope of harvest before it becomes suburbia.
6
DESERT SNOW
Which mankind strives for
Will succeed – or fail.
It’s like snow upon the desert:
Shines a few seconds then gone forever.
In these battered conditions we call life,
Time passes quickly – night follows day.
Kings and Presidents with all their power
We’re here for but a little while and then no more.
There is a park where children play
Beneath which the Churchills and the Hitlers are buried
Along with the dead of their great armies,
The children cannot break their sleep.
The young couple who just made love in the garden,
The same garden where great armies bled.
Many a battle for life or death happened there.
He picked a rose and put it in her hair.
And the fruit trees that grow on the bank of the river
Beneath which we sit – Oh! Don’t pollute the water!
Nor strip the trees bare! Hundreds before you enjoyed it
Hundreds after you will share what you leave behind.
7
THE LOVELIEST AND THE BEST
Sweetheart, let’s make a toast today,
A toast that clears today of regrets and fears,
Tomorrow is another day, my love,
And yesterday is dead and gone.
They had their moment with the loveliest and the best
That old father time allowed them;
They had their glasses of wine and made passionate love,
And at the end of the day went to rest.
Hey! It’s party time in the room they left behind
We enjoyed ourselves there.
But as we grow old, the young
Now make party in that same room.
“She was saved from the boys
And given to the worms,” says a grandmother.
“Buried beneath a clod of clay,
Without wine, without song, without singer and without end.”
Do you live for today?
Do you work hard so that tomorrow might be better?
All the philosophers in the pub will tell you,
“Fools – your reward does not exist.”
8
PRIESTS AND SCIENTISTS
The priests and scientists who discuss
Creation and evolution so wisely,
It matters not when and where they go,
It is only their opinion or writings in some book.
When I was young the priests and politicians
Tried to change my life style
With arguments or threats,
Though I stood fast.
I took some scholars under my wing
And did my best to educate them.
At the end of the day it was I who was educated.
I found myself to be a free spirit.
In this Universe my spark of life began,
I knew not where or why.
When conceived in my mother’s womb,
It began my lottery of birth.
I did not hurry nor ask neither where I went nor why.
Neither religion nor politics showed the way.
My teacher’s taught me why.
Will my life slip away with my indecision.
9
SIR! MY GLASS IS EMPTY
I had an out-of-body experience
And to the heavens I flew.
I learned a lot as I went on,
But not the secret of man’s destiny.
There was a mystery,
It perplexed me:
We shared our life for a brief while
Before death struck us down.
The answer was not hidden from us.
The mysteries of the seas beneath and the stars above,
Every day and night reveals their answers
If you know where to look.
My soul guides my gently through the darkness
And I lifted my heart,
To find a light at the end of the tunnel
And I heard a voice crying – “Are you blind.”
I tried to learn the secret of my life
While looking into an empty glass.
And all the life that had drunk from that glass whispered,
“Drink – you may never pass by this way again.”
10
GENTLY BROTHER
This empty glass was once sand upon a beach
And had fought the sea for a million years.
Ah! Drink, for what passive lip
Might kiss this glass when I have gone.
I remember playing sandcastles on the beach
I saw he machine of industry change my sandcastles
Into glass. It whispered as I drank,
“Gently brother, gently please.
I’ve heard a few wild stories in my time.
Of Adam and Eve and creation!
Really – can a chunk of earth
Be made into a human being?
Not a drop of water shall reach your lips
In the fires of hell
For it is forbidden
God commanded it so.
The sunflower in the morning seeks the rising sun
And locks onto its movement all day long.
Is your day a search for sunshine and beauty?
Surely this would be a noble ambition.
11
CHANGE OF HEART
Whether ‘it is’ or ‘is not’ so,
Whether it’s black or white I do not care for,
All I could give a dam about
Was to enrich my life with love.
At the door to my heart
Came Cupid with his bow and arrows.
He should shoot us all through the heart
It feels wonderful all over – I fell in love.
Seek love!
Not by school or church though
As neither can
Change the heart.
The greatest people in my life,
Some derelict, some beautiful and some were rich,
Cause me fears and sorrows
And only love could change this.
Come with me to some secluded place
Where we can forget the mysteries of life
And you and I in that quite corner
Can poke fun at those who does the same to us.
12
ROSES AND THORNS
TV documentaries on the world around us
Convince us that we should care.
But Mother Nature, in one foul swoop
Could wreck you and I and the TV show too.
If your life is full of love
It will end when you go.
But when you return
That love will be much stronger.
You are like a rose in a beautiful garden
But roughly treated you will thorn me,
But when your petals have dropped one by one,
You will no longer be noticed, though the thorns will remain.
Mother Nature controls our lives
And fate and destiny rule the nights and days.
This makes you go ‘down’, ‘up’ and ‘around’.
Then beneath the earth to lie.
In the election of life it matters not
If you vote yes or no.
I put it to you: please consider this –
Your God knows it all – He knows!
13
HAPPINESS AND PLEASURE
God is here and God is there.
You might not think so with all your pain,
But He’s in Mother Nature and in your very being,
Everything on this planet will eventually perish – except Him.
Our life is but a moment timed by God’s watch.
You cannot see him no matter what the drama might be,
Though taking into account all eternity –
He made it, He controls it and only He will end it.
No matter how vain you are, heaven will not open its activities and d door.
While you are on this earth as you are today,
You cannot change the past or the future.
Though what will happen when you are you no more?
Don’t waste your time dreaming,
Be wary of activities and disputes.
Better be happy with a beautiful girl –
What do you want – success, disputes or pretty girls?
I got a divorce and soon after remarried
Booted out unhappiness and despair,
Now I make love with happiness and pleasure
And I feel much better for it.
14
UNDERSTANDING
‘Is’ and ‘is not’ is no problem to me,
‘Up’ and ‘down’ and ‘around about’,
Is not a problem to me.
Simply because I couldn’t care less.
My use of words people say
Have cast a light on their lives –
Not so, it’s your understanding of what I say
That will affect your thinking.
I’m coming face to face with the evening of my life.
As I look back upon it all I wonder
The only part which I should not have changed
Were the lows between the highs.
The joy of love and a pinch of logic
Would confuse all my enemies;
For there is not a man alive
Who could change the things I have done.
Would God upon His golden throne
Relieve the heartless
Of the fears and sorrows that concern them most
And let them see with His shining light.
15
THE LOVES OF MY LIFE
The loves in my life are a gift from God –
Who dares blaspheme and say it’s not.
Coming from God I should enjoy it, should I not,
And if it’s wrong – is God wrong?
Must I give up my love of life?
I’m scared of what could happen when I die.
It’s time I thought of what to do!
Time flies, of this I’m certain.
Isn’t it strange that not one of those who have died
Have never came back to tell us what it’s like.
There is only one way to solve this mystery:
You have to go yourself and you can’t come back.
All the wisdom of doctors and priests
Which they have written and preached for all to see and hear
Are all but stories we should have taken heed of,
And all this wisdom never gave them an extra day’s life.
16
FATE
I spoke to people who died and were revived
Hoping to learn of life’s greatest mystery.
They all told me the same thing –
While I live, heaven and hell are within me.
Is heaven what you wish for yourself?
Is hell when t all goes wrong?
This has been a mystery all my life.
Why must I have to die to solve this mystery?
We are all but characters of a never-ending play,
Of ‘ups’ and ‘downs’ and ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ that ‘comes’ and ‘goes’.
For I was never deep in anything but laughter.
Midday or midnight, the show went on.
We are but helpless creatures controlled by fate.
It all goes by – a never ending scene of days and nights.
We are moved here and there and mixed with different people,
But one by one fate takes its toll.
Fate does not care about your hopes and dreams.
You have to take life as it comes.
The only one who knows it all
Is He who gave you life, and He alone will end it.
17
THE PURPOSE
AS you go about your life fate dictates –
There is nothing you can do about it.
You cannot change a thing that’s happened.
No matter how deeply you regret it.
Don’t lift your hands to the sky for help.
It cannot help you – it’s a dark void.
The sun and the planets of the galaxy move
As you and I do on the planet earth.
Dust into dust and under dust to lie
With earth’s first dawning and at the last harvest,
The dawn of the first morning of creation
Caused the last dawn of reckoning your soul.
You are today what were made yesterday:
Tomorrow there will be happiness or sorrow:
Be happy, you don’t know where you came from nor why.
Be happy, you don’t know you go nor why.
When you find your purpose in life
And you spend your life achieving this goal
Every Tom, Dick and Mary Do their best to interfere –
But did you get it right?.
18
THE LIGHT
I see a light at the end of the tunnel,
It guides me – let them shout:
If you had a key that unlocks my heart and mind
The world would be welcome to come and go in love and peace.
If the light in your life should kindle to love
Or be stomped out in anger:
One flash of it in a hotel bar is better
Than not having it at all in a church.
If we are created from useless nothing
And grow into a conscious something
The unpermitted pleasures in life
According to religion, be made a penalty.
Why should I be held responsible
For Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
It was their sin – not mine.
So leave me alone to do my own thing.
The creator made the pathway of my life
With pitfalls and with alcohol and drugs.
Surely God would guide me through this evil pathway.
He would not let me fall to sin.
19
WOULD HE BREAK THE CUP?
Oh God, you made men what they are.
You put into paradise the snake
To drive mankind to sin,
Would you forgive man’s faults?
In the cool of the evening
The day’s problems I leave behind,
I found myself in the Creator’s house.
I stood surrounded by shapes of clay.
There were all sorts and sizes, great and small.
They were on the floor and around the walls.
Some just could not stop talking,
And some listened and never spoke at all.
Surely my God did not make me in vain?
He made me out of common earth.
He moulded me into my current form.
Would He trample me into shapeless earth again?
Another said, “Would He break the cup
Which He enjoyed drinking out of?”
It seemed to me that, as God made me with His divine love
He surely wouldn’t get angry and destroy me.
20
COULD GOD MAKE A MISTAKE?
There was one who was made crooked –
He was fed up with his lot and said,
“They laugh at me because I’m different,”
What! Did God make a mistake?
One of them shouted out – he was a fancy soul,
But none-the-less a man.
“As God made me in his image,
Does this not make me Godly?
Another said, “There is one who threatens
“That he will toss to hell
“The pots which were not made properly.”
God’s a good fellow and everything will be OK.
One said, “Let me tell you this,
“My life is a mess –
“Talk to me sweetly and kiss me,
“I think after a while I will recover.”
While everyone was talking
The moon shone through the window
And spread a little light on their problem,
They noticed that the potter was getting tired.
21
JUST WHAT THE PUBLICAN ORDERED
At the end of the day as my life fades,
I ask that you wash my body with wine
And lay me wrapped in vine leaves,
And bury me in the garden.
My body, once buried, would be a snare.
It would fertilize a grapevine
And make an excellent wine,
Take a sip and you would be intoxicated.
All those things that turns me on
Have done my credit in man’s eyes much wrong,
I gave up the glory and drank the wine.
And sold my reputation for a song.
I swore to walk the straight and narrow,
But I wasn’t sober when I took the oath.
And then came a pretty girl
And she proved just how weak I was.
Perhaps I enjoyed wine and song too much,
Which robbed me of my honour?
I wonder if the publican uses
The stuff he sells.
22
WOULD THE MOONLIGHT HELP?
When a teenager becomes an adult
And the sweetness of youth fades,
The world will still turn
And the birds will continue to sing
If you see the light even dimly
Of the Oasis in the Desert,
Should it not be enough to attract the traveller
And refresh his soul before he moves on.
What if an angel should come along
And interfere with your fate?
Would it not change your life?
Would the angel make it richer or poorer.
Should we take our life in hand
And change all the sorrowful bits entirely,
And then for the better
Rearrange our life in love and happiness.
The moon above shines its silver rays
And lights up my life at night.
Would you like to join me in the garden?
The moonlight would help us through the night.
23
WITHOUT END
The waitress of the night shall come and go
Amongst the guests of Mother Earth
Until she reaches the place
Where a guest turned down n empty glass...
24
Impressum
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 19.01.2010
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