If- Rudyard Kipling
You Start Dying Slowly- by Pablo Neruda
You start dying slowly
if you do not travel,
if you do not read,
If you do not listen to the sounds of life,
If you do not appreciate yourself.
You start dying slowly
When you kill your self-esteem;
When you do not let others help you.
You start dying slowly
If you become a slave of your habits,
Walking everyday on the same paths…
If you do not change your routine,
If you do not wear different colours
Or you do not speak to those you don’t know.
You start dying slowly
If you avoid to feel passion
And their turbulent emotions;
Those which make your eyes glisten
And your heart beat fast.
You start dying slowly
If you do not change your life when you are not satisfied with your job, or with your love,
If you do not risk what is safe for the uncertain,
If you do not go after a dream,
If you do not allow yourself,
At least once in your lifetime,
To run away from sensible advice…
On Children By Khalil Gibran
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
somewhere i have never travelled- by E. E. Cummings
Liberty- Paul Eluard
On my desk and on the trees
On the sands of snow
I write your name
On the pages I have read
On all the white pages
Stone, blood, paper or ash
I write your name
On the images of gold
On the weapons of the warriors
On the crown of the king
I write your name
On the jungle and the desert
On the nest and on the brier
On the echo of my childhood
I write your name
On all my scarves of blue
On the moist sunlit swamps
On the living lake of moonlight
I write your name
On the fields, on the horizon
On the birds’ wings
And on the mill of shadows
I write your name
On each whiff of daybreak
On the sea, on the boats
On the demented mountaintop
I write your name
On the froth of the cloud
On the sweat of the storm
On the dense rain and the flat
I write your name
On the
flickering figures
On the bells of colors
On the natural truth
I write your name
On the high paths
On the deployed routes
On the crowd-thronged square
I write your name
On the lamp which is lit
On the lamp which isn’t
On my reunited thoughts
I write your name
On a fruit cut in two
Of my mirror and my chamber
On my bed, an empty shell
I write your name
On my dog, greathearted and greedy
On his pricked-up ears
On his blundering paws
I write your name
On the latch of my door
On those familiar objects
On the torrents of a good fire
I write your name
On the harmony of the flesh
On the faces of my friends
On each outstretched hand
I write your name
On the window of surprises
On a pair of expectant lips
In a state far deeper than silence
I write your name
On my crumbled hiding-places
On my sunken lighthouses
On my walls and my ennui
I write your name
On abstraction without desire
On naked solitude
On the marches of death
I write your name
And for the want of a word
I renew my life
For I was born to know you
To name you
Nazim Hikmet-
One hundred years have passed without seeing your face
link your waist
dwell in your eyes
ask your clairvoyance
approach the warmth of your belly.
A hundred years ago in a city
a woman waiting for me.
We were on the same branch, in the same branch.
We fell in the same branch, we parted.
One hundred years have passed
one hundred years of road.
A hundred years ago in the dark
I run behind her.