Thursday thought: What is success?

What is Success?

To laugh often and much;

To win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children;

To earn the appreciation of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends;

To appreciate beauty;
To find the best in others;

To leave the world a bit better, whether by
a healthy child, a garden patch
or a redeemed social condition;

To know even one life has breathed
easier because you have lived;

This is to have succeeded.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Been re-reminded of this by this Blog Pound conversation. It's one of those poems that I've handwritten and carry with me, reminding myself that it's all about attitude.

If you haven't read this before, I hope you enjoy.

The boy who nearly won the Texaco Art Competition

he took a large sheet
of white paper and on this
he made the world an african world
of flat topped trees and dried grasses
and he painted an elephant in the middle
and a lion with a big mane and several giraffes
stood over the elephant and some small animals to fill
in the gaps he worked all day had a bath this was saturday

on sunday he put six jackals
in the world and a great big snake
and buzzards in the sky and tickbirds
on the elephants back he drew down blue
from the sky to make a river and got the elephants
legs all wet and smudged and one of the jackals got drowned
he put red flowers in the front of the picture and daffodils in the bottom corners
and his dog major chewing a bone and mrs murphys two cats tom and jerry
and milo the milkman with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth
and his merville dairy float pulled by his wonder horse trigger
that would walk when he said click click and the holy family
in the top right corner with the donkey and cow
and sheep and baby jesus and got the 40A bus
on monday morning in to abbey street to hand
it in and the man on the door said
thats a sure winner

by Joe Kane

This simple poem has become one of my recent favourites. Written for Ted Hughes, it is the first poem in the wonderful Lifelines anthology, and also from a collection of poems under the same title.

I've been thinking of it every time I go to overcomplicate something recently.

Naomi's Atomic Angels

I read this poem yesterday on a break from reading these three books.



I think it's clever, poignant and strangely appropriate to my current reading. It's by Naomi, whose MySpace is here.

Atomic Angels

When I was four

I asked my mother

"Where's God?"

"He's under the chair,"

she said, 
"everywhere."


So I lifted the cushion

and in the darkness

I saw.


Years later

I'm full
not empty.

If you ask me 
where to find God

I tell you

"under the chair"

I believe in no God

but feel that if there is one,

It must be everywhere.


I see oaks, 
churches of canopied ceilings,

green fresco
es to make Old Masters weep.

Altars of basalt
, cemented with clay,

Bricks, mortar...

all quiver with the song 
of atomic angels.


Daily bread
 is coloured tartrazine,

divine blood makes
 plastic bottles

labelled River Rock.

Relics like rosaries,

fashionable reverbations
of moonstone 
or common nickel

real holy artefacts

hewn from spirituality itself:
Awareness.


Read a Bible in the cerulean sky
or pensive clouds
of precognitive meteorological forecasts.
Tears litter the inky sky,
blinking eyes of satellites.

Blessed crosses 
map paths and junctions

life trails of humans
offer salvation
the whole world wide is your Friends List.


As for Darkness,

don't worry.

If there was God
It would live in
 black holes,

Under The Chair.

You bring the light

lifting the cushions

looking for answers.


Discussing it with me, Naomi wrote "... everything we touch, see and do is miraculous, even the clear plastic of a bottle that was refined from crude oil which was once carbon and biodegraded matter... if we are our own gods by creating miracles through science, those atoms are the spinning angels."

In many ways she's right. We have come so far, especially in Irish society, having been ruled by literal interpretation of the written word of those who used the figure of Jesus for their own power and dominance. We have far more power than ever before.

Yet, with all the scientific breakthroughs, the experiments, the advances and the progress, we still are reliant on things like love, a hug, a friend's company, a smile. The poem echoes my belief - God is where you look for God. Seek and you shall find.