Some people may find these two lines a bit too simplistic for their taste but, when I thought of them yesterday, I felt comforted. Like many of these small, aphoristic poems, written by Piet Hein in the 20th century, they are more sophisticated than they seem at first.
I owned a couple of paperback collections of Grooks when I was a teenager and fragments of the poems still surface in my mind, like this one:
You'll conquer the present suspiciously fast
When you stink of the future and smell of the past.
According to Google, the half dozen or so Grook collections went out of print for a while but are now being reissued. If you can't find them, Oldpoetry has 55 of them for your enjoyment. Here are a couple of links to whet your appetite:
oldpoetry.com/opoem/6439-Piet-Hein-Two-Passivists
oldpoetry.com/opoem/show/13774-Piet-Hein-A-Tip
Here's another one I always liked.
Shun advice
at any price
that's what I call
good advice
Here's another. Perhaps useful in writing poetry?
There is
one art,
no more,
no less:
to do
all things
with artlessness
Check it out. Enjoy.
Selves are made to rise above.
You shall live in what you love.
You shall live in what you love.
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The first link is missing the /show/. I did find it at
http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/show/6439-Piet-Hein-Two-Passivists
after the second link connected just fine.
I found the poem "A Tip" connected more for me. Put me in mind of Benjamin Franklin's quote, "It is better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."
I guess once you write, your thoughts are committed to paper, and open to all sorts of interpretation and contradiction!
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Glad you enjoyed it. I had quite a time with that first link as /show/ actually was missing. Or else I really am losing it. Anyway, thanks for your patience and for putting me right on that.
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