The end of freedom

When the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility,
        then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.

                    Edith Hamilton

 

 

 

 

 

 

Practice

Like playing the violin or the piano,
        thinking needs everyday practice.

                Charles Chaplin, My Autobiography

The Great Renewal

The great renewal of the world will perhaps consist in this,
that man and maid, freed of all false feelings and reluctances,
will seek each other not as opposites, but as brother and sister,
as neighbors, and will come together as human beings.

                    Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: America is a Gun

England is a cup of tea.
France, a wheel of ripened brie.
Greece, a short squat olive tree.
America is a gun.

Brazil is football in the sand.
Argentina, Maradona's hand.
Germany, an oompah band.
America is a gun.

Holland is a wooden shoe.
Hungary, a goulash stew.
Australia, a kangaroo.
America is a gun.

Japan is a thermal spring.
Scotland is a highland fling.
Oh, better to be anything
than America as a gun.

                        Brian Bilston 

 

 

 

 

 

Live!

Live all you can —
    it's a mistake not to.
        It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular,
            so long as you have your life.
                If you haven't had that, what have you had?

                                Henry James, The Ambassadors