Really
The silent music of the heart
Put to the key of letters and words
And so the dishonest poet
Is really no poet at all
Only a peddler of holes
Fake emotion
i wonder, is it possible to be a good poet in a language other than your "heart language?" Probably it is mostly up to the individual who is critiquing the poetry in the first place, but while i hesitate to make comment on something which i haven't given great lengths of thought, i would say that to me, at least, real poetry is and will always be impossible for me in any other language than English.
Have you ever thought about the difficulty of the balance we as humans must come to between the music of the heart and what turns out to be more of an arithmetic problem of the mind? It's as if we are constantly struggling between the worlds of engineers and poets simultaneously. And perhaps i'm creating a sort of generalization which is true only in my life, but i really do think it's something everyone must come to terms with at certain times. Listening only to the heart's music can have the potential of turning your life into nothing more than mistaking empty illusions for real Love and real Truth and a real God. But then living only inside a math problem which your mind creates pushes you into a life of cynicism and jadedness, of doubt and anger, where you always feel as if the world is simply a cold, white hospital room.
For some reason, the very same God who gave us the gifts of music and poetry and painting and the emotions behind those expressive behaviors also decided to create a universe that operates under strict, complex rules of math and physics and chemistry and the like. i have no explanation for it. But i don't think we need one. i think we Westerners try as hard as we can to eliminate mystery, but the mystery of God is something that no passing of time could ever debunk.
"Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades?
Can you loose the cords of Orion?
Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons
or lead out the Bear with its cubs?
Do you know the laws of the heavens?
Can you set up God's dominion over the earth?
Can you raise your voice to the clouds
and cover yourself with a flood of water?
Do you send the lightning bolts on their way?
Do they report to you, 'Here we are'?
Who endowed the heart with wisdom
or gave understanding to the mind?
Who has the wisdom to count the clouds?
Who can tip over the water jars of the heavens
when the dust becomes hard
and the clods of earth stick together?"
~Job 38:31-38
Do you see it there? Do you see that the God who set entire galaxies in orbit also had the creativity to paint the very constellations we see each night? The same God who would have us build bridges would also have us sing in the shower. He is one in the same, and it matters not whether you think you are good at art or good at math. They all fit into this crazy life of ours in order to give it a depth which would not exist otherwise. And we don't have to know why that is, because the answer to all those questions God asked Job is "no." An emphatic one at that. Revel in that mystery.
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