To Be Happy Is Not To Be Poem by Aniruddha Pathak

Man a useless passion is, Sartre said,
And life’s futile of foison like most dreams,
And scarce worth all the fuss that has been made,
The more fuss man makes, more futile it seems.

Man feels like hackney horse when happy feels,
Like stallion war horse if miserable;
Trees look happy, so do birds, even eels,
For, little do they care for a laid label!

In happiness, the truth is, man’s man not,
Nor when he in love is, nor when he sees
A beautiful sunrise, a lovely spot,
A silent lake, the Nature that just is!

Should there be no happiness ‘pon this earth,
To Voltaire’s loo1 this fine planet might turn;
Creation besides a monstrous non-worth,
To smirk would turn the smiling face of sun.

Yet, more melancholic man is, the more
Meaningful he feels as does his ego,
Who, when in bliss, far away from his door,
Leaves seeds of misery elsewhere to sow.

But how much happiness does man deserve?
On what virtue he wings, what’s his chief good2?
A twain of birds, yet, of feather and verve,
They flock together, together they brood.

In uttering lies I my own self be,
Or when the shoes pinch, and ne’er seem to fit,
Things when go wretched wrong I fully be,
But in perfect fit, I forget my feet!

I forget me, life when looks fulfilling,
If not, futile, as if of no meaning,
And I’ve Shakespearean dilemma: to be…
O to swim this ocean of misery!

If idle a nurse I be to all vice,
And sure a mother of all ignorance,
Of all melancholy a loaded dice,
But ignorance is bliss of soul at once!

So, to be is miserable to be,
‘In not to be I feel truly happy!
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1. Voltaire once called our planet Earth ‘the latrines of
the universe’.

2. Emmanuel Kant once said: Virtue and happiness
together constitute the possession of the summum
bonum in a person.
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- Musings | 12.11.11 |