Make Me a Sheep, O God by Laxmi Prasad Devkota

Dead tired I am, O God !
Make me a sheep, please.

This house of mine, a sword of Damocles
This bane of thinking
This sin of knowing
This heart-burning judgment of conscience
The three kinds of worries that I may fall into
This show of rising higher
This curse of bearing responsibility !

No ! No ! I so not want the magnificent pomp !
Let all the accounts be cleared after death !
Sweet and carefree !
Give me a beast's irresponsibility !
O God !Life without a spade but not the curse of labor,
The sweet thing is but to crunch the self growing grass !
Why the eighty-four types of dishes?
Why the tongue artificialised?
Why the ears artificialised?
Why so many perfumes for a dirty nose?
Why the sculpture-writer Vedavyas and a number of works like Shukabahattari fancy false?Why the hard labor of ignorance deep?
Why the yoking of the body?
So much of tears and cries- all of no use !
So much of shrieks of laughters for the change !
Why such a great deception over the flaming funeral pyre ?
Why playing on so many strings?

Listen to me !
Let the strong sufiet as they like;
but knowledge should not belong to me
A true hermit is the sheep.
the natural taste being the green,
The bleating may not blaspheme the virtues of god
Singing the praise in taste,
may not the cloth be woven;C
loth may not be woven;
let it be grown all over the body.
Let me fight with my horns.
Let there be no spiritual fight.
Let time glide smoothly !
Let there be no universal scorching-
the atomic destruction of the atheist.
Let me not make the false and sophisticated wisdom soar,
So that the queer future may give a string !
Let not the devil sit on my horns
As the symbol of knowledge.
Let me not dabble at the trap of civilization;
Let me not soar higher leaving the reality behind.
Let not my soul fall towards the ideals.
Let not the false strings play sweeter songs than "Ba ! Ba !"
Let me love the lamb.
I need only paternal feelings, O Lord
This is all I want.
No matter If he dies. It is up to the wish of my Lord !
Worry I won't- let not my breast dry till he lives,
Until his body becomes full.Or the grass becomes hard
And he does not become able to eat by himself
And no doctor is to be called.
Let my soul, inclined towards terrible black art,
never take speed.
Let not jump to the void like a sage.
Or with an artificial imagination.
Let me not create distorted magic of variegated colors out of magic-less truth
Let me not become a Brahmin to live on dirty water washing away other's sin;
Let me not advance my feet towards Hell,
being fully conscious of sins as the virtuous persons.
Let me not reform in order to expose this world.
Let me not patch up the old and tattered things.
Let me lit the light of life,Like the simple beautiful and un-beautiful light of Nature,
When dyingLet me reach higher up than the sage,
And to the heaven, than the Brahmin,To the abode of bliss than the pious,
Let me not point out a defect !Let me have divine animality,
O Providence,
Be kind to me and seize me quickly !Come !
Please !Make me a sheep right now.

He has fallen from the black clouds
and is living in the shadows.
Do we see a god in him,
or do we see a beggar?

- Laxmi Prasad Devkota

Oh yes, friend ! I'm crazy-that's just the way I am.

Oh yes, friend ! I'm crazy-that's just the way I am.

I see sounds,
I hear sights,
I taste smells,
I touch not heaven but things from the underworld,
things people do not believe exist,
whose shapes the world does not suspect.
Stones I see as flowers,
lying water-smothered by the water's edge,
rocks of tender formsin the moonlight
when the heavenly sorceress smiles at me,
putting out leaves, softening, glistening,throbbing,
they rise up like mute maniacs,like flowers,
a kind of moon-bird's flowers.
I talk to them the way they talk to me,
a language, friend,that can't be written or printed or spoken,
can't be understood, can't be heard.
Their language comes in ripples to the moonlit Ganges banks,
ripple by ripple..Oh yes, friend ! I am crazy-that's just the way I am.

You're clever,
quick with words,
your exact equations are right forever and forever.
But in my arithmetic take one from one...
and there's still one left.
You get along with five senses,
I with a sixth.You have a brain, friend,I have a heart.
A rose is just a rose to you...to me it's Helen and Padmaini.
You are forceful prose,I liquid verse.
When you freeze I melt,
when you're clear I get muddled and then it works the other way round.
Your world is solid,mine vapor,yours coarse, mine subtle.
You think a stone reality;harsh cruelty is real for you.
I try to catch a dream,
the way you grasp the rounded truth of cold, sweet coin.
I have the sharpness of the thorn,
You think the hills are mute...
I call them eloquent.Oh yes, friend !I'm free in my inebriation-that's just the way I am.

In the cold of the month of Magh
I sat warming to the first white heat of the star.
The world called me drifty.
When they saw me staring blankly for seven days
after I came back form the burning ghats
they said I was a spook.
When I saw the first marks of the snows of time in a beautiful woman's hair
I wept for three days.
When the Buddha touched my soul
they said I was raving.
They called me a lunatic
because I danced when I heard the first spring cuckoo.
One dead-quite moon night breathless
I leapt to my feet,filled with the pain of destruction.
On that occasion the fool sput me in the stocks.
One day I sang with the storm...
the wisemen sent me off to Ranchi.
Realizing that same day, I myself would die
I stretched out on my bed.
A friend came along and pinched me hard and said,
Hey, madman,your flesh isn't dead yet !
For years these things went on.I'm crazy, friend-that's just the way I am.

I called the Nawab's wine blood,
the painted whore a corpse,
and the ding a pauper.
I attacked Alexander with insults,
and denounced the so-called great souls.
The lowly I have raised on the bridge of praiseto
the seventh heaven.
Your learned pundit is my great fool,
your gold my iron,friend !
your piety my sin.
Where you see yourself as brilliant
I find you a dolt.Your rise, friend-my decline.
that's the way our values are mixed up,friend!
Your whole world is a hair to me.
Oh yes, friend, I'm moonstruck through and through-moonstruck!
That's just the way I am.

I see the blind man as the people's guide,
the ascetic in his cave a deserter;
those who act in the theater of lies
I see as dark buffoons.
Those who fail I find successful,
and progress only backsliding.
Am I squint-eyed,or just crazy?Friend, I'm crazy.
Look at the withered tongues of shameless leaders,
the dance of the whore
sat breaking the backbone of the people's rights.
When the sparrow-headed newsprint spreads its black
liesin a web of falsehood to challenge Rason-
the hero in myself-my cheeks turn red, friend,
red as molten coal.
When simple people drink dark poison
with their ears thinking it nectar-
and right before my eyes, friend !-
then every hair on me maddened !
When I see the tiger daring to eat the deer, friend,
or the big fish the little,then into my rotten bones
there comes the terrible strength of the soul of Dadhichi
and tries to speak, friend,
like the stormy day crashing down from heaven
with the lightning.
When man regards a manas not a man, friend,
then my teeth grind together,
all thirty-two,top and bottom jaws,
like the teeth of Bhimasena.
And then red with rage my eyeballs rollround and round,
with one sweep like a lashing flame taking in this inhuman human world.
My organs leap out of their frames-uproar ! uproar !
My breathing becomes a storm,my face distorted,
my brain on fire, friend !
with a fire like those that burn beneath the sea,
like the fire that devours the forests,frenzied, friend !
as one who would swallow the wide world raw.
Oh yes, my friend,
the beautiful chakora am I,destroyer of the ugly,
both tender and cruel,
the bird that steals the heaven's fire,
child of the tempest,spew of the insane volcano,
terror incarnate.Oh yes, friend,my brain is whirling, whirling-that's just the way I am.

Fear No More by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Fear no more the heat o' the sun;
Nor the furious winter's rages,
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages;
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney sweepers come to dust.

Fear no more the frown of the great,
Thou art past the tyrant's stroke:
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak:
The sceptre, learning, physic, must
All follow this, and come to dust.

Fear no more the lightning-flash,
Nor the all-dread thunder-stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;
Thou hast finished joy and moan;
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee, and come to dust.

No exorciser harm thee!
Nor no witchcraft charm thee!
Ghost unlaid forbear thee!
Nothing ill come near thee!
Quiet consummation have;
And renowned be thy grave!

All the World's a Stage by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

A Ballad of the Two Knights by Sara Teasdale (1884 - 1933)

Two knights rode forth at early dawn
A-seeking maids to wed,
Said one, "My lady must be fair,
With gold hair on her head."

Then spake the other knight-at-arms:
"I care not for her face,
But she I love must be a dove
For purity and grace."

And each knight blew upon his horn
And went his separate way,
And each knight found a lady-love
Before the fall of day.

But she was brown who should have had
The shining yellow hair --
I ween the knights forgot their words
Or else they ceased to care.

For he who wanted purity
Brought home a wanton wild,
And when each saw the other knight
I ween that each knight smiled.

"Elegy" by Ambrose Bierce(1842-1914)

The cur foretells the knell of parting day;
The loafing herd winds slowly o'er the lea;
The wise man homewards plods; I only stay
To fiddle-faddle in a minor key.