decide which
petulant shadow hides
integrity.

honesty abounds yet the flags
will find us.

Joel, just so you know

I have it on good authority that our heavenly poets
are always near exhaustion, as the clean air, and the
distraction-free life gives one inspiration by the unending,
poetry the common language in the babel up above

but to be sure they see our messages and scrips, I forward them upward via Messenger, from down here to their seemingly inactive page, but don’t you poet, disbelieve me, they may not be able to send or reply to you via Fedex Direct, but they are receiving just fine

So I send them poems just so they’re knowing that they are
still on my mind…right Joel?

or do I say,

Write on Joel?

early daylight across my face sweeping,
gingerly ginger-yellow heated by the low-
risen sun, it confirms what my beating heart
yet signals, granted us, a new twenty and four,

but no more,

for certainty is not a human condition, so we cover
our eyes, not from the sun-rays, but in deference and
thankfulness and  gratitude, that we have one more chance
to the world distribute, blessed human loving kindness, unique,
the greatest gift most excellent we human possess to give away freely!

Jewely 23, Twenty Twenty Three
8:30am

LXXI

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit

   Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

LXVI

I sent my Soul through the Invisible,

Some letter of that After-life to spell:

   And by and by my Soul return’d to me,

And answer’d “I Myself am Heav’n and Hell:”

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But there are very rare occasions when the translation is so good it actually supersedes the original, taking it to a wider audience. If there is an argument for anyone having done that, it is probably Edward FitzGerald with his translation of “The Rubaiyat” of Omar Khayyam.