Two Poems on: Beauty Grows Old, and "What is Important"

Two Poems on: Beauty Grows Old
(And commentary on what is important)

Song of the summer
(Along the Shores of Lima)


Oh, winter is gone and spring has fled.
Oh, days are long, and nights are dead.
And the ski is clear and the winds’
blowing warm.

Summer is new and the ocean wind meek
how it stops and creeps about—
along the shores, of Lima!…

death, oh death
and its faintest breath has a whisper
from the pacific gloom—
and it sighs under the pale skies
of the Lima moon.

Oh, winter is gone and spring has fled.
Oh, days are long, and nights are dead.
And the ski is clear and the winds’
blowing warm.


Written 1-6-2008 at EP, in Miraflores, Lima, Peru.


Once we were Lilies

We all shall lose thy beauty in the end,
a while longer thou shall see my friend.
Thy lips once soft, as silk, shall grow old;
once beautiful maidens, now lilies lain froze!
Beauty, oh beauty, now desolate.

#2136 1-6-2008 Written at EP, in Miraflores, Lima, Peru



What is Important?


It seems to me most people I see, as I look here and there, neighbors, and so forth, live in a circles, not realizing how they got to the circle, nor care; seldom do they leave it, and wait to die in it (this is Lima I’m talking about, as well as the rest of the world, and especially St. Paul, Minnesota where I also live, and in the Andes, where I live). In between, they survive, pray, eat, sleep, but never go beyond the circle. I ask myself, why do I think like this, perhaps it is true, and having an active life, going to war, and traveling the world, and trying to meet quest after quest, it is simple for me to spot such things—it is neither right or wrong, it just is. I see in the mountains (the Andes) Sheppard’s and in the valleys and jungles, folks doing their crafts, selling this and that in the Amazon, as well as in Guatemala, Mexico, Vietnam, Cambodia, Bali, Java, and so forth, making it from day today, whose families have been doing the same thing for generations, where poor is really poor, and most are uneducated, but how they love a simple book on their culture, how proud them become. They really haven’t missed much, to be honest, I mean, I seen a lot, but so what, it only tells me, people are almost all the same, worldwide, from India, to Cambodia, to the slums in Minnesota, Chicago, New York, and Seattle, to Peru. Poor is poor, and generations hand down their recipes to the next, and that is what my Russian roots did, my grandfather to my mother, and to me, but I kind of forgot what recipes they were, so I may be the gap in the generation chain, when folks in the future look back. So what is this all about, these words, comments: it is nice to be who you are, not someone else, not envious or jealous, or anything like that. We’ve chosen our lives as they are, for whatever reasons, and most likely they are pretty good reasons, so what now? A good question, perhaps whatever you’ve been dreaming to do, if possible, go do it, time is short. I found out most folks that want to take a trip around the world, could if they wanted to (stop this or that and they could come up with the money), but don’t, why because it is not that important. You see we can sell this or that do this or that to make it happen, but we don’t because this or that is not that important. I could have had 20-hourses paid for, but I traveled around the world 27-times, so I only end up with two, that is the price one pays, you got to count the cost. That is what was important to me yesterday. Today, I have a new plan, and that is what is important to me now, and I am working it. To all those young folks out there, get a plan, and work it. Don’t stop in the middle and say, ‘Well…’ and have an excuse to stop it. Work the plan out. Make a new one after that one is done. So many folks start and stop, that they never finish anything, and die saying, “If only…” or “I could have…but?” Do it!!