Poems for the challenging times………… (One ancient and other recent)

Poems for the challenging times…
(One ancient and other recent)

LIVING IN THE PRESENT

Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course
Lie all the varieties and realities of your existence:
The bliss of growth,
The glory of action,
The splendour of achievement,
For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision,
But today well lived make every yesterday a dream of Happiness,
And tomorrow a vision of HOPE.
Look well therefore to this day!
Such is the salutation to the dawn.

-Kalidasa. 5th Century

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Expect Nothing
Alice Walker

Expect nothing. Live frugally
on surprise.
Become a stranger
To need for pity
Or, if compassion be freely
Given out
Take only enough.
Stop short of urge to plead
Then purge away the need.

Wish for nothing larger
Than your own small heart
Or greater than a star.
Tame wild disappointment
with cares unmoved and cold.
Make of it a parka
For your soul.

Discover the reason why
So tiny a human midget
Exists at all.
So scared, unwise
But expecting nothing.
Live frugally.
On surprise.

(courtesy: Dr.Joyce Ponnaiyya)