I had forgotten about this poem, written in the early 1960s, as a protest against the Vietnam War. It resonates even more today. The original follows, from Khalil Gibran, written in 1933

Poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

"PITY THE NATION"
(After Khalil Gibran)

Pity the nation whose people are sheep
And whose shepherds mislead them
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars
Whose sages are silenced
And whose bigots haunt the airwaves
Pity the nation that raises not its voice
Except to praise conquerers
And acclaim the bully as hero
And aims to rule the world
By force and by torture
Pity the nation that knows
No other language but its own
And no other culture but its own
Pity the nation whose breath is money
And sleeps the sleep of the too well fed
Pity the nation oh pity the people
who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away
My country, tears of thee
Sweet land of liberty!

Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.
Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave
and eats a bread it does not harvest. 

Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero,
and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful. 

Pity a nation that despises a passion in its dream,
yet submits in its awakening. 

Pity the nation that raises not its voice
save when it walks in a funeral,
boasts not except among its ruins,
and will rebel not save when its neck is laid
between the sword and the block. 

Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox,
whose philosopher is a juggler,
and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking 

Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpeting,
and farewells him with hooting,
only to welcome another with trumpeting again. 

Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years
and whose strongmen are yet in the cradle. 

Pity the nation divided into fragments,
each fragment deeming itself a nation.

Kahlil Gibran, The Garden of The Prophet

Beautiful rendition!

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.” 

- Anaïs Nin

“When people don't express themselves, they die one piece at a time.” 

- Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

Our body is just something you accumulated. It is a piece of earth you imbibed through food... Your body is on loan from the planet. All the countless numbers of people who have lived on this planet before you and me have all become topsoil, and so will you. This planet will collect back atom by atom what it has loaned to you...

If one is constantly, experientially aware that both the body and the mind are accumulations one has gathered, then that is samadhi. You are in the body, but you are not it. You are of the mind, but you are not it. That means that you are absolutely free of suffering because whatever suffering you have known enters you either through the body or through the mind. Once your awareness is keen enough to create a space between these two accumulations and who you really are--this is the end of all suffering.

-- Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev (with Cheryl Simone),
Midnights with the Mystic

One Regret

One regret, dear world, that I am determined not to have 

when I am lying on my deathbed is that 

I did not kiss you enough. 

— Hafiz

I long for You so much

I follow barefoot Your frozen tracks

That are high in the mountains

That I know are years old.

I long for You so much

I have even begun to travel

Where I have never been before.

-- Hafiz

Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.

-- Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha

Once in mid-reach, I inquired of my hand.

"What moves you in that direction?
     What hope do you expect to fulfill?"

And an answer came to mind, for my hand
     had never really talked.

A voice I heard within said,
     "It is freedom from the shackle that is the root
           of all desire."

It is freedom from the shackle that is the
      root of all desire.

I am at a juncture now, 
     where I never have to be serious again.

If I act that way -- sober and concerned
     about everything --- it is a charade.

For those people who are serious, let's face it:
     they seem to have lots of problems.

And, who wants those?
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