IF YOU’RE NOT IN IT TO WIN THEN DON’T BOTHER

Never attempt anything you are unwilling to actually win.

Turks, you had the guts to try, I’ll give you that, and to your credit, but what is momentary courage without the determination to finish the job?

You may very well now deeply regret the one without the other.

And so will, I suspect, a lot of other people as well…

Next time, be resolute.

THE RAINS OF THE SATRAPS OF PERSIA – FIRST VERSE

THE RAINS TO COME

This morning I awoke to a veritable deluge. After feeding the animals I sat down and watched the heavy rains fall. Something became triggered in my mind. About modern people, about the past, about how nothing is ever really learned, and still the Rains fall as they have ever fallen. And so do people, and nations… The storms always come and yet so few ever are prepared.

I just started it and then my wife interrupted me so I had to leave off. So it is unfinished, of course, but then again, what isn’t…?

THE RAINS OF THE SATRAPS OF PERSIA

This storm is like the rains of the satraps of Persia
Grey and harsh, heavy and burdensome, slavish and cold
Unrelenting does it fall across the broad expanse
Of a slumbering world blind and dumb in its naïveté –
Of unnumbered peoples in distant and yet unconquered lands
Eternally preoccupied in their basic self-absorption

Yet still the rains of the satraps of Persia drop countless
Flooding tokens of their weight, their true intent lost among
The Forgetful Minds of Men distracted by the unmarked cenotaphs
Of daily Life, though they have seen no sun in many years…

_______________________________________

other lines I’ve yet to work in:

No clear moon in decades now

The Reign of the Satraps of Persia
Time forgets nothing, though men forget everything
Except to remember what befalls when they don’t…