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The race is to the swift

Happy be or sad, like a long journey
Life is, and burden man aught to carry,
Heavy— let thine step be slow and steady,
That ye should stumble not in a hurry,
Old Buddhist wisdom, feeling its oats, said;
Be steady and firm like a mountain wall,
Deep like ocean, mild like moon to thine stead,
Echoed Jain thought; it matters none at all
How slow ye walk long as ye walk the way,
A Confucius creed more chaos did spread;
In too much of hurry, ye go astray,
Slow down to no movement, reach there un-sped,
Pondered Osho; the race, said Christ, not to the swift,
Shall thine goal gift; but world still races to the lift!
_____________________________________________ __________
This is a tongue-in-cheek kind of sonnet. Thoughts presented
are serious, but the underlying tone is light. All spiritual
wisdom advises men to move slow and steady to the goal, and
yet the world seems to be in a mad hurry; it's a rat race in
every field, as the Volta, just half of the last (14th) line suggests.
The end couplet reflects the rush to conclude, and in the
process, could not afford to be brief, ending up two syllable
longer!

We have all noticed, an orderly queue awaiting arrival of the
elevator in a tall building. But the moment the lift reaches the
spot, everyone starts pushing forward in a scramble. This is what
I call automobile culture, what we all do while driving on a busy
city road— pushing. This is what ‘race to the lift' means. Today
we admire the swift rabbit, not the slow and steady turtle of the
popular Panchatantra story.
_____________________________________________ _________________
- Sonnets | 02.12.11 |

poem by Aniruddha Pathak
Added by Poetry Lover
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