Follow the Inner Voice

two poems to inspire and contemplate during difficult times:

WALK ALONE

If they answer not to thy call, walk alone;
If they are afraid and cower mutely facing the wall,
Open thy mind and speak out alone.
If they turn away and desert you when crossing the wilderness,
Trample the thorns under thy tread,
And along the blood-lined track travel alone.
If they do not hold up the light when the night is troubled with storm,
With the thunder-flame of pain ignite thine own heart,
And let it burn alone.

-Rabindranath Tagore

HARD TIMES

Music is silenced, the dark descending slowly
Has stripped unending skies of all companions.
Weariness grips your breast, and within the draped horizons
Dumbly ring the bells of hugely gathering fears.
Still, O bird, O sightless bird,
Not yet, not yet the time to fold your wings.

It's not melodious woodlands but the leaps and falls
Of an ocean swelling with drowsy thunder,
Not a grove bedecked with flowers but a tumult heaved with foam.
Where is the shore that stored your buds and leaves?
Where the nest, the branch that offers shelter?
Still, O bird, my sightless bird,
Not yet, not yet the time to fold your wings.

Stretching in front of you the night's immensity
Hides the western hill where sleeps the distant Sun;
Still with bated breath the world is counting passing time, and
Across the shoreless dark obscurity, a crescent moon
Has thinly just appeared upon the dim horizon.
--But O my bird, O sightless bird,
Not yet, not yet the time to fold your wings.

From upper skies the stars with pointing fingers
Intently watch your course, and from the deep, death's impatience
Lashes at you in restless, leaping waves;
And sad entreaties plead from the farthest shore
With hands outstretched and wailing
'Come, O come!' Still, O bird, O sightless bird,
Not yet, not yet the time to fold your wings.

All that is past: your fears and hopes and love's illusion;
All that is lost: your useless words and lamentation;
No longer yours a home nor a nuptial bed strewn of flowers.
For wings are all you have, and the vast firmament of sky
And the dawn steeped in darkness, losing all direction.
Dear bird, my sightless bird,
Not yet, not yet the time to fold your wings.

-Rabindranath Tagore