I to my perils
Of cheat and charmer
Came clad in armour
By stars benign.Hope lies to mortals
And most believe her
But man’s deceiver
Was never mine.The thoughts of others
Were light and fleeting,
Of lovers’ meeting
Or luck or fame.Mine were of trouble,
And mine were steady,
So I was ready
When trouble came.
-By Housman
Somehow can’t wait for the weekend to begin.Perhaps reading this poem triggered it.
“A Drinking Song” by Yeats:
WINE comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That’s all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.
Short Answer:There are too many unpredictables or “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns”
This reminds me of another great poem by Cavafy called Nero’s deadline
Nero wasn’t worried at all when he heard
the utterance of the Delphic Oracle:
“Beware the age of seventy-three.”
Plenty of time to enjoy himself still.
He’s thirty. The deadline
the god has given him is quite enough
to cope with future dangers.Now, a little tired, he’ll return to Rome—
but wonderfully tired from that journey
devoted entirely to pleasure:
theatres, garden-parties, stadiums…
evenings in the cities of Achaia…
and, above all, the sensual delight of naked bodies…So much for Nero. And in Spain Galba
secretly musters and drills his army—
Galba, the old man in his seventy-third year.
Another great poem from Cavafy…suitable for amateur traders.
Possessed by fear and suspicion,
mind agitated, eyes alarmed,
we desperately invent ways out,
plan how to avoid the inevitable
danger that threatens us so terribly.
Yet we’re mistaken, that’s not the danger ahead:
the information was false
(or we didn’t hear it, or didn’t get it right).
Another disaster, one we never imagined,
suddenly, violently, descends upon us,
and finding us unprepared—there’s no time left—
sweeps us away.
Now that all the news etc are about the Euro/Greek crisis, as I am sipping my Ardbeg, I am reminded of one of the greatest Greek poets- C P Cavafy.
My favorite poem of his is called Ithaka and goes like this:
As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.