Sunday 30 November 2008

Fear

The only Thing
That we must Fear
Is Fear Itself
That gnaws the Heart


The Good lie fallen
Men beat their Breasts
Lost in Anguish
A Cry goes up

They rise as one
The Wave breaks
And leaves its Ashes
Upon the Desert Shore

But some recall
What came before
And slowly climb
An ancient Stream.

Upon its Banks
They lay their Load
And there in Time
Love grows a Rose.

—okei


Photo: 'First Rose of Summer' by Bernard Blanc

10 comments:

  1. Oooooh, marvelous! My friend Okei is a good poet-mathematician! You can 'count' me as one of your fans....hah-hah! How right! Without 'fear', what do we have to fear?.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Okei, that was beautiful.... you write very well! Thanks for sharing this.

    It kinda reminded me a little, of the lion from the Land of Oz.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I re-read the Wizard of Oz last night and it is a lot about about facing fear. ;^) The four main characters are all courageous in their different ways. But the dog Toto has a false courage which is closer to stupidity, like jumping into the trapdoor hole, or freezing before the witch of the North, but yapping furiously on her departure. And the lion's just sensible!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thinking more about the Wonderful WoZ...

    Courage is nothing to do with fear, it's working out what the right thing is to do and doing it. In more detail, it's

    concentrating on what needs to be done (Dorothy),
    figuring out how to do it (Straw Man), &
    following through on the decision and doing it (Tin Man).

    So the lion didn't have real courage after all, until he "realized" it.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Very astute of you, my friend. I like your observations of the characters.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Really cool article I came across about the Wizard of Oz as an allegory of the 19th century depression.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7933175.stm

    The Munchkins all dressed in blue are the workers enslaved by the banking and industrial corporations in the East, the Wicked Witch of the East who takes a hit from Dorothy's house (so for us that would be bad mortgage debt!!) after a tornado and melts away. And the Munchkin song shows they are not very motivated by what they do:

    We get up at twelve
    And start to work at one
    Take an hour for lunch
    And then at two we're done

    And the people's quest to get their president to solve their problems...off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz!, but the wizard's a fraud and at the end of the journey they find everything they were looking for within themselves...

    ReplyDelete
  7. This is so beautifully written...

    ReplyDelete
  8. Awesome Poem Okei. I feel humbled.

    Thank you for letting me in.

    _/\_

    ReplyDelete