What would you do?
What would you have the strength to do
If you were told you could not fail?
Raise two children, build a fine zoo?
Find a new cure, open your mail?
Or would you comfort all who ail?
Fly a rocket, discover space?
Create a product, make a sale?
If fear of failure found no place.
Turn the angry a friendly face?
Bind the broken, oppressors crush?
Treat all hate with abounding grace?
Enter where only fools would rush?
Without failure, what to dream of?
Universal, abiding love?
Baha, 160 B.E.
© Larry Gates, 2003
Decorous Fraud
The curtained windows, the brightly painted façade,
Invites one to pass though the well-made doors.
So, why am I thinking, as I enter, well-dressed, well-shod
Of termites and roaches, of vermin beneath these floors?
The smiles are gracious, the sincere greeting restores
My thoughts to matters both suitable and kind.
Yet, here with friends good and true, in pours
A sense of death and decay, as if to grind
Away dignity and decorum, all peace of mind.
But the sun shines on, light comes to these eyes
Contemplating the surface and imagining what’s behind
Seeing both marble and dust, flowers and flies.
Who could countenance such a fraud
But an all-seeing, all-forgiving, loving God?
-Kalimat, 157 B.E.
© Larry Kenneth Gates 1999
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