Where the sun rises, it also sets

A rangy brown man with wispy white hair
told me life is suffering, toil and despair.
Somewhere down the line we’d made a wrong turn,
met hatred with hatred, futile efforts to repair
fat stomachs with medicine, and refusal to learn
that knowing is the problem, like reliance on prayer.

Life is absurd but all joy dwells within it.

He said love has no cause but hatred many fathers,
we push up the rock, quarrel with gods for honours,
hope dashing down the mountain to the plains.
Not the first to say it is illusion that gathers
when happiness we store around us like chains,
our attachments will sink us into deep waters.
Free our minds from cause and effect, loving
kindness, once ego denied: the self is no thing.

Life is absurd but all joy dwells within it.

Thinking, I couldn’t escape inward motion,
the ones I love — to give up — an impossible notion.
My heart maybe wrong in excesses and sorrows
yet, myself purely rational, lacking emotion:
like a rock swept along by fate, a man borrows
time from no being, whatever devotion.

Life is absurd but all joy dwells within it.