Sand Castles. Are Like Us by Art Borjal

You’ve watched it, too. I’m not the first and only person who has seen it. But there is a lesson in it that we both may have overlooked.

There are some children on a beach. They’re playing and giggling - building sand castles all the while. They seem so intent on the project. You get amused at how meticulous and careful they are with crumbly corners and towers. The looks on their faces as they screw their mouths and stick out their tongues make you smile. Their resolute concentration on the task is priceless.

Then a big wave begin building and starts toward shore. But the kids don’t panic. Instead, they do the strangest thing. They jump to their feet, scream with delight and watch the torrent of water wash away their creations. There is no panic. No sadness. No bitterness. Even children know the inevitable end of sand castles. They are neither surprised nor angry about what has happened.

You and I should be so wise. The stuff of this world is about as lasting and durable as children’s sand castles on the beach. Yet we grownups can get so caught up in it, defensive of it and depressed over the loss of it.

Children know that their sand castles are brief joys destined to disappear with an incoming tide. So they don’t fret as the waves approach. They watch their creations get swept away without shedding tears. Again, we should be wise.

Everything about this life is fleeting and perishable. The incoming wave of human mortality is going to sweep it away. Like sand castles, nothing done for the sake of this world can last. Only what we do for eternity will survive.

What would the loss of your job or business do to you? What if your house were lost to fire or storm? What if a strange pain sent you to your physician and led to the discovery that you have only a few weeks to live? These things really do happen to people, you know. We are all as vulnerable as sand castles.

Life is God’s gift. Revel in every good thing. But as you enjoy your creations in the sand, just remember not to get overly attached to them.

Remember, you are worth not for what you have, not even for who you are but what others have become because of you.

From the column of Art Borjal of the Philippine Star.

He's my granduncle. :)

The Humble-Bee

BURLY, dozing humble-bee,
Where thou art is clime for me.
Let them sail for Porto Rique,
Far-off heats through seas to seek;
I will follow thee alone
Thou animated torrid-zone!
Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer,
Let me chase thy waving lines;
Keep me nearer, me thy hearer,
Singing over shrubs and vines.

Insect lover of the sun,
Joy of thy dominion!
Sailor of the atmosphere;
Swimmer through the waves of air;
Voyager of light and noon;
Epicurean of June;
Wait, I prithee, till I come
Within earshot of thy hum,—
All without is martyrdom.

When the south wind, in May days,
With a net of shining haze
Silvers the horizon wall,
And, with softness touching all,
Tints the human countenance
With a color of romance,
And, infusing subtle heats,
Turns the sod to violets,
Thou, in sunny solitudes,
Rover of the underwoods,
The green silence dost displace
With thy mellow, breezy bass.

Hot midsummer's petted crone,
Sweet to me thy drowsy tone
Tells of countless sunny hours,
Long days, and solid banks of flowers;
Of gulfs of sweetness without bound
In Indian wildernesses found;
Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure,
Firmest cheer, and bird-like pleasure.
Aught unsavory or unclean
Hath my insect never seen;
But violets and bilberry bells,
Maple-sap, and daffodels,
Grass with green flag half-mast high,
Succory to match the sky,
Columbine with horn of honey,
Scented fern, and agrimony,
Clover, catchfly, adder's-tongue
And brier-roses, dwelt among;
All beside was unknown waste,
All was picture as he passed.

Wiser far than human seer,
Yellow-breeched philosopher!
Seeing only what is fair,
Sipping only what is sweet,
Thou dost mock at fate and care,
Leave the chaff, and take the wheat.
When the fierce northwestern blast
Cools sea and land so far and fast,
Thou already slumberest deep;
Woe and want thou canst outsleep;
Want and woe, which torture us,
Thy sleep makes ridiculous.

)when what hugs stopping earth than silent is

)when what hugs stopping earth than silent is
more silent than more than much more is or
total sun oceaning than any this
tear jumping from each most least eye of star

and without was if minus and shall be
immeasurable happenless unnow
shuts more than open could that every tree
or than all life more death begins to grow

end's ending then these dolls of joy and grief
these recent memories of future dream
these perhaps who have lost their shadows if
which did not do the losing spectres mime

until out of merely not nothing comes
only one snowflake(and we speak our names

it is at moments after i have dreamed

it is at moments after i have dreamed
of the rare entertainment of your eyes,
when (being fool to fancy) i have deemed

with your peculiar mouth my heart made wise;
at moments when the glassy darkness holds

the genuine apparition of your smile
(it was through tears always)and silence moulds
such strangeness as was mine a little while;

moments when my once more illustrious arms
are filled with fascination, when my breast
wears the intolerant brightness of your charms:

one pierced moment whiter than the rest

-turning from the tremendous lie of sleep
i watch the roses of the day grow deep.

-e.e. cummings

Poor Creatures!

What it takes on this planet
to love each other in peace:
all the world examines the sheets,
all of them trouble your love.

And they say terrible things
about a man and a woman
who, after lots of vacillations,
and lots of deliberations,
do something incomparable,
fall together into one bed.

I ask myself if the frogs
stake out, sneeze at, themselves,
whether they whisper in ponds
against the outlaw frogs
against the joy of spawn.
I ask myself if the birds
make bird enemies
and if the bull listens to oxen
before he pays court to the cows.

Now the streets have eyes,
the parks have police,
the hotels have their spys,
the windows note down names,
troops and guns are sent out
resolute against love,
working incessantly
the throats and the ears,
and a guy and his girl
are forced to burst into flower
while fleeing on a bike.

- Pablo Neruda

1(a... (a leaf falls on loneliness)

1(a

le
af
fa
ll

s)
one
l

iness

it may not always be so;and i say

it may not always be so;and i say
that if your lips,which i have loved,should touch
another's,and your dear strong fingers clutch
his heart,as mine in time not far away;
if on another's face your sweet hair lay
in such a silence as i know,or such
great writhing words as,uttering overmuch,
stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;

if this should be,i say if this should be-
you of my heart,send me a little word;
that i may go unto him,and take his hands,
saying,Accept all happiness from me.
Then shall i turn my face,and hear one bird
sing terribly afar in the lost lands.

Your hands

When your hands leap

towards mine, love,

what do they bring me in flight?

Why did they stop

at my lips, so suddenly,

why do I know them,

as if once before,

I have touched them,

as if, before being,

they travelled

my forehead, my waist?

..

Their smoothness came

winging through time,

over the sea and the smoke,

over the Spring,

and when you laid

your hands on my chest

I knew those wings

of the gold doves,

I knew that clay,

and that colour of grain.

..

The years of my life

have been roadways of searching,

a climbing of stairs,

a crossing of reefs.

Trains hurled me onwards

waters recalled me,

on the surface of grapes

it seemed that I touched you.

Wood, of a sudden,

made contact with you,

the almond-tree summoned

your hidden smoothness,

until both your hands

closed on my chest,

like a pair of wings

ending their flight.

- from 'versos del capitan' by Pablo Neruda

When We Two Parted

When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow—
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame;
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o'er me—
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well:—
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met—
In silence I grieve
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?—
With silence and tears.

-George Gordon, Lord Byron

Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Lines

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

-Pablo Neruda