Shahriar

“This is my last letter
There will be no others.
This is the last grey cloud
That will rain on you,
After this, you will never again
Know the rain.
This is the last drop of wine in my cup
There will be no more drunkenness.

This is the last letter of madness,
The last letter of childhood.
After me you will no longer know
The purity of youth
The beauty of madness.
I have loved you
Like a child running from school
Hiding birds and poems
In his pockets.
With you I was a child of
Hallucinations,
Distractions,
Contradictions,
I was a child of poetry and nervous writing.
As for you,
You were a woman of Eastern ways
Waiting for her fate to appear
In the lines of the coffee cups.

How miserable you are, my lady,
After today
You won't be in the blue notebooks,
In the pages of the letters,
In the cry of the candles,
In the mailman's bag.
You won't be
Inside the children's sweets
In the colored kites.
You won't be in the pain of the letters
In the pain of the poems.
You have exiled yourself
From the gardens of my childhood
You are no longer poetry.”
― Nizar Qabbani, Arabian Love Poems: Full Arabic and English Texts

“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”
― Marcus Aurelius

“Love without courage and wisdom is sentimentality, as with the ordinary church member. Courage without love and wisdom is foolhardiness, as with the ordinary soldier. Wisdom without love and courage is cowardice, as with the ordinary intellectual. But the one who has love, courage and wisdom moves the world.”
― Ammon Hennacy