Till Death Do Us Part......

desiderata.english

On the day after, these were the words from our beloved Prime Minister:
"When we lose a member of the family, we have to submit to God and be patient."
I leArn from a God-feAring Man. My Towring Malaysian of a leAder.

The nation joined Pak Lah and loved ones in mourning the demise of Datin Seri ENDON MAHMOOD on Thursday October 20, 2005; many shed tears, and even the heavens opened up with darks skies, in recognition of the loss of a LIFE WELL LIVED, OF A FRIST LADY WHO HAD WON TH HEARTS OF ALL CARING MALAYSIANS. Most of all, we salute her for having loved her significant other, OUR ESTEEMED PRIME MINISTER DATUK SERI ABDUAALH AHMAD BADAWI, WITH A HEART THAT BEAT AS ONE WITH PAK LAK. We know, it shows.

Desiderata is not one good at writing about One Subject – dealing with Life and Death, and God – this is where the writer treads with trepidation for he’s not adequately equipped to write about such “things” with clear and unquestioning convictions. Man finds it difficult to cope with death, especially of a loved one when Death visits too early. So I normally turn to MY MASTERS in such challenging times -- they never fail me.

Emily Dickinson captured the “mood and atmosphere” of a death by describing the flurry of activities surrounding the deceased’s house in a neighbourhood, with three of six stanzas following:

There’s been a death in the opposite house
As lately as today.
I know it by the numb look
Such houses have alway.

The neighbours rustle in and out,
The doctor drives away.
A window opens like a pod,
Abrupt, mechanically;
Somebody flings a mattress out –
The children hurry by;
They wonder if it died on that –
I used to when a boy.



And from the evergreen poet, Dickinson, who will always be around us with her discerning observations of all aspects of human living.

The Chariot

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility. We passed the school where children played,
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.
We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.
Since then 't is centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.

And from Robert Louis Stevenson comes this short poem, whose last two lines have been, and continue to be, quoted so often it clearly demonstrates the impact this great poem has had on generation after generation.

Requiem

Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie:
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he long’d to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.


Sometimes I am visited by night “landscapes or moonscapes, or is it mental-escapes?” which could not be properly framed by words or fathomed completely for their message;
somehow, there’s an approximation to this surreal world of God, Faith and Death in "Midnight Voices" which I am particularly proud of, here reprised, for those who missed it on first apparition.


Familiar voices
With faint messages
Half communicated

They descend in my sleep
Beckoning welcome
To their bosomy fireplace
But I wasn't given directions
Just urges rising in my breast
And my restless soul striving to touch base

Will these authors of midnight voices
Please give me the complete signals
That I may truly hear and arrive?
I long to join your abode
And temporarily escape this insanity
As earthlings sleep
While my heart beats
In answer to half-perceived
midnight voices