I love the lofty world of learning

Splitting the hair and picking the needle

My hair turns gray, my eyes grow dim

Oh, quid pro quo for my guilt

I guess I am lost in too many thoughts

Is this the crux of my crime?

I ponder and wonder too many times

Is this the source of my sorrow?

I harry and worry through many turns

Is that the manner of my madness?

Why did I not realise

That there is trouble for the thoughtful?

Why is it I could not see

That transition itself is treason?

How did I not understand

That there is pain in becoming?

That like recurrent pangs of birth

There is pain in becoming

When one stage loses grip

And another takes the throne.

Ah, what an agonizing pain

When the new dispensation

Expels the old hurriedly!

The whole story must sound lunatic

Yet how sane is life itself?

When the entire world seems lunatic

Whence lies madness?

In my crazy drive  through lunatic life

Only paradoxes make sense:

To close your eyes is to see well; to renounce all is to gain all

To descend low is to rise high; to die to self is to live indeed.

With this perplexing logic

The only truth there is is faith -

That blind leap in the dark

Ah yes, this life is a journey

Through a tunnel of night

Whose only light is faith.

At two plus five

I can now figure out clearly

That I am being offered a choice

The outcome of which may be

The supreme test of my sanity:

To become an animal ,or to become a saint

To descend to demonic depths, or to ascend to angelic heights

Thank God I have a choice, the ultimate choice of my race

To sink low in emotional decay, or to surge high in fiery love

To surrender pitiably to moral apathy or to charge passionately for real justice.

To resign shamefully to intellectual cynicism

Or to rise up seriously to radical contemplation

To be lost in the darkness of doubt and despair

Or to triumph in the light of faith and fortitude.

At two great scores plus five I choose the latter, not the former

I choose to love, though I struggle daily with selfishness

I want to fight though I feel my terrible weakness

I'd rather believe, though I distrust my resoluteness

My conviction is my consolation

That in God's army

Only the wounded may serve!