June is the month of justice, through its enlightenment and because the sun is now highest. Loving is not for reason, morality does not serve personal happiness. Utility is neither an ethical nor an aesthetic value. We need the times of lightness in life to see the difference.
The Philistine
If you just keep walking straight,
So the Philistine thinks:
Bend your head to the tarred ground, not to heaven,
If you just get up early enough in the morning
To fill out many, many forms the whole day,
Then you are a kind man and a faithful subject,
A pride of the nation and a pillar of society.
You fool! Do you seriously believe that human dignity
Can be measured in terms
Of Philistine’s paragraphs and figures?
Do you think a clear conscience
Comes from stubbornly following rules?
Anyone who hasn’t suffered at least once
For the sake of truth
Anyone who has not broken a rule at least once
For the sake of justice,
– He does not deserve to be called
A righteous man,
Anyone who has not at least once
Chosen a colour that contemporaries hate,
For the sake of beauty and art
– He does not deserve to be called an artist.
Nor is it a poet who lets himself be stuffed
Into crystal glasses, styles and drawers
Of obligations without crying,
Complaining and taking flight.
And it is certainly not a lover the one
Who only follows a series of manners,
Rules of etiquette and platitudes,
And considers that to be real love.
That’s not a lover, thats an idiot.
No one can be a good man, however,
Without being fair, being artistic or
True loving.
* * *
Reason and Understanding
If history has taught us anything,
It is that pure reason only leads to order.
But no one says that order is human, or even caring.
Logic is the only thing that comes from reason,
Law and order are the ones that result from logic,
But no compassion, no mercy,
Because that comes from hope and love,
It needs an understanding heart.
Understanding and reason are not the same,
The latter is less, a thought construct,
A fading stage of real humanity.
* * *
Reaper
Only the shadows we felt, only the shadows
Of the heaps of bones our grandparents piled up:
And all day they suffered from their pain
Mirrored from days long, long gone.
Woe betide us, but now the knowledge is gone
And the blood witnesses are no more.
No one warns us of the omens
That herald a new firestorm.
All these years they had hoped so much
That war would never come again.
It’s a terrible thing
Not to learn from history.
What’s worse is to know,
But not be able to do anything.
Because the mighty are thirsty for blood.
And they will not stop for reason.
* * *
True Life
Happiness lies in small things only,
In the silence of a rainy day,
When the big busy world
Stays as far away as possible.
What remains when the times pass
Is perhaps only this silence,
The silence of the instant –
And the calm of pausing,
When the dripping rain gently
Trickles from refreshed pines,
Small blue circles bounce
Across the garden pond.
Happiness lies in small things only,
In the silence of a rainy day,
When you remember a wind chime
That in pure fifths intones true life.
* * *
