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[LINK] Poem: There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.
The poem is from someone whose online pseudonym is atiguhya padma. I'll quote the first verse, the refrain, and the beginning of the second verse to give you enough flavor to decide if you want to follow the link. There are about 9 verses total.
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Rationalist sonnets about being a person
A friend tells me that, if there is no soul,
There is no clash of body against mind.
I hate to be contentious, but I find
The case is rather different, on the whole.
For flesh and mind are clashing all the time;
The flesh says "eat!", the mind says "lose some weight."
The mind cries "run!", the flesh drones "vegetate,"
The soul is no wise guilty of this crime.
Am I the athlete who desires to run,
Or else the slugabed who yearns for quiet?
Do I crave food, or would I rather diet?
The I that speaks is both, and neither one.
When flesh and mind contend with shouts obscene
I place the soul--the self--smack in between.
-----smallship1
that weave the self between them, interplay
a dialogue that may change day to day
creates consistency. Self understands
what neither flesh nor mind can apprehend
yet is a fiction and a referee
yet needs to be reined in. So fluently
its guesses become fantasies and end
in things we cannot know, that are not there
-God, Hell and Heaven - all ways to deny
the simple tasks life gives us. Mortify
the flesh, confuse the mind. Hope and despair.
The self's a servant. Use it, never let
it rule, or you will die full of regret.
-----rozk
:
A poem for LessWrong
PZ Myers posted this on his blog; it is very beautiful, and I think expresses the purpose (at any rate, one purpose) of LessWrong. It even offers a battle cry: "I am not resigned".
Dirge without music
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and laurel they go: but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains - but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love -
They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind:
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
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