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Robert Lindner
An ode for Bob Dylan with Dylan Thomas and for Ram Dass with Omar Kayyam
Saying Good Night
“Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight. Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night By Dylan Thomas
“If with wine you are drunk be happy, If seated with a moon-faced (beautiful), be happy,
Since the end purpose of the universe is nothing-ness;
Hence picture your nothing-ness,
Then while you are, be happy!”
The Rubyat of Omar Kayyam
Life is ephemeral and will go beginning to end and in between grow
Older and older until it runs out of time and fails. That’s what age is about,
Counting minutes, counting hours, counting days or not counting. In existential ways,
Just being, until time sees fit for me to be the nothingness of not to be.
For life’s, but a drop in an ocean wide, a grain of dust that is with earth allied.
And our moments called life too quickly fade. Still, it’s in those moments when plans are made,
But e’en the best laid plans can go astray. “Gang aft agley” as Bobbie Burns would say.
Of mice and men and the short existence, of their plans that fail, though they may make sense
In the light of day. Because that good night
That Dylan Thomas says we must rage, and fight
And not go gentle into, will come to
All. Once we’re born there’s nothing we can do.
Neither Ram Dass nor Bob Dylan were born Ram Dass or Bob Dylan, but then one morn
When their lives crossed a line, they were reborn. Their bodies were the same, but they were torn
Away, as the songs of their minds and souls found freedom in their existential goals.
And Bob Dylan said good night to Robert Zimmerman and Ram Dass left his Alpert
Name behind when he found what was his true self, as not a Jew and then as a Jew.
Bob Dylan took Dylan Thomas first name as his last, as his shooting star became
A diamond flame burning in Lucy’s skies after Thomas’ meteoric rise
And fall at just thirty-nine years of age, but he did not go gentle and said, “Rage,
Rage against the dying of the light.” in
His villanelle, that knew life must begin
And end. He wrote, “wise men know dark is right.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight.”
But I’d just like to say good night without worrying that Dylan Thomas will shout
About “the dying of the light” inside us from that sad height where rage would provide
Blazing meteors, fierce tears, as his eyes saw the coming of darkness to their skies.
As his day was ending and death drew near. But it’s not death, it’s just old age, I fear,
The dying of the light, and not its death. When breathing is hard, before the last breath.
Then there’s nothingness that follows being, with that blinding sight, the end of seeing
The light because it’s dying or we are, as we must, when our life, that shooting star
Meets earth’s atmosphere, flashes and we see it consumed, in the fire that we will be
Before the nothingness beyond seeing
When seated with a moon-faced and being
Happy, while picturing the end purpose
Of the universe that’s the end of us.
Say Goodnight Robert
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