I love the lofty world of learning
Splitting the hair and picking the needle
My hair turns gray, my eyes grow dim
Oh, quid pro quo for my guilt
I guess I am lost in too many thoughts
Is this the crux of my crime?
I ponder and wonder too many times
Is this the source of my sorrow?
I harry and worry through many turns
Is that the manner of my madness?
Why did I not realise
That there is trouble for the thoughtful?
Why is it I could not see
That transition itself is treason?
How did I not understand
That there is pain in becoming?
That like recurrent pangs of birth
There is pain in becoming
When one stage loses grip
And another takes the throne.
Ah, what an agonizing pain
When the new dispensation
Expels the old hurriedly!
The whole story must sound lunatic
Yet how sane is life itself?
When the entire world seems lunatic
Whence lies madness?
In my crazy drive through lunatic life
Only paradoxes make sense:
To close your eyes is to see well; to renounce all is to gain all
To descend low is to rise high; to die to self is to live indeed.
With this perplexing logic
The only truth there is is faith -
That blind leap in the dark
Ah yes, this life is a journey
Through a tunnel of night
Whose only light is faith.
At two plus five
I can now figure out clearly
That I am being offered a choice
The outcome of which may be
The supreme test of my sanity:
To become an animal ,or to become a saint
To descend to demonic depths, or to ascend to angelic heights
Thank God I have a choice, the ultimate choice of my race
To sink low in emotional decay, or to surge high in fiery love
To surrender pitiably to moral apathy or to charge passionately for real justice.
To resign shamefully to intellectual cynicism
Or to rise up seriously to radical contemplation
To be lost in the darkness of doubt and despair
Or to triumph in the light of faith and fortitude.
At two great scores plus five I choose the latter, not the former
I choose to love, though I struggle daily with selfishness
I want to fight though I feel my terrible weakness
I'd rather believe, though I distrust my resoluteness
My conviction is my consolation
That in God's army
Only the wounded may serve!