So?

~ Live & Learn

nigel-cox-in-timberland

So you aren’t Tolstoy or St. Francis
or even a well-known singer
of popular songs and will never read Greek
or speak French fluently,
will never see something no one else
has seen before through a lens
or with the naked eye.

You’ve been given just the one life
in this world that matters
and upon which every other life
somehow depends as long as you live,
and also given the costly gifts of hunger,
choice, and pain with which to raise
a modest shrine to meaning.

~ Leonard Nathan, “So?”

 

Notes:

 

 

30 thoughts on “So?”

    1. You and Neruda…

      You start dying slowly
      
if you do not travel,
      
if you do not read,

      if you do not listen to the sounds of life,

      if you do not appreciate yourself.

      You start dying slowly

      When you kill your self-esteem;

      When you do not let others help you.

      You start dying slowly

      If you become a slave of your habits,

      Walking everyday on the same paths…
      
If you do not change your routine,

      If you do not wear different colours

      Or you do not speak to those you don’t know.

      You start dying slowly

      If you avoid to feel passion

      And their turbulent emotions;

      Those which make your eyes glisten

      And your heart beat fast.

      You start dying slowly

      If you do not change your life when you are not satisfied with your job,
      or with your love,

      If you do not risk what is safe for the uncertain,

      If you do not go after a dream,

      If you do not allow yourself,

      At least once in your lifetime,

      To run away from sensible advice…

      — Pablo Neruda

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        1. I’m off to check him out. Thanks. (if this is any indication, I need to read more, much more)

          The Potato Eaters:
          BY LEONARD E. NATHAN

          Sometimes, the naked taste of potato
          reminds me of being poor.

          The first bites are gratitude,
          the rest, contented boredom.

          The little kitchen still flickers
          like a candle-lit room in a folktale.

          Never again was my father so angry,
          my mother so still as she set the table,

          or I so much at home.

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  11. First time I read this Neruda poem was in French. In English is plays like Violin on the soul strings. In French, Harp.

    “Walking everyday on the same paths…”

    Didn’t a Hyundai banner give you the same message not too long ago?
    😉

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  13. I think we all feel that way — we want to be famous, important, above the crowd. We say we don’t, yet we dream of what it would be like if we were. We are happy with our lives — I wouldn’t have the great people in my life if I’d taken a different path. Yet…the flash of being more than who we are…like lightning striking every now and then.

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