The Sea and the Man
-by Anna Swir
You will not tame this sea
either by humility or rapture.
But you can laugh
in its face.
Laughter
was invented by those
who live briefly
as a burst of laughter.
The eternal sea
will never learn to laugh.
thank you for sharing this!
ReplyDelete(see you tomorrow. hope you're enjoying this gorgeous afternoon.)
I don't quite understand this poem – I feel like I'm sadly unable to appreciate it very well. Maybe if I spent more time with it, I would figure it out. I kinda interpreted parts of it as using laughter to defy helplessness, which is a concept that I like quite a bit. What do you like about it Andreas?
ReplyDeleteMadi (and whoever's reading)- When I read this, I imagine a human looking at the ocean and feeling small/powerless when comparing themselves to the ocean, its vastness, its depth... "You will not tame this sea." But, while we are these little squishy things, we can laugh at the ocean. We can't control it, but we can laugh at it. Laughter, sweet sweet sweet laughter, is something humans can do that the ocean can't. I often run into stuff that imagines humans as these small things that seem/feel powerless amongst the vastness of everything else. This poem sort of flips that. While we are not vast/powerful in the sense that the ocean is, we have access to something (laughter) that the ocean doesn't have access to. The ocean can't laugh, a star can't laugh, the wind can't laugh, lightning can't laugh, the essentially endless realms of outer space can't laugh. But you and I can!
ReplyDeleteAnd laughter is a sort of power... This all sort of reminds me from a quote from Rumi: "“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.”
ReplyDeleteAnd laughter is a sort of power... This all sort of reminds me from a quote from Rumi: "“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.”
ReplyDeleteMadi (and whoever's reading)- When I read this, I imagine a human looking at the ocean and feeling small/powerless when comparing themselves to the ocean, its vastness, its depth... "You will not tame this sea." But, while we are these little squishy things, we can laugh at the ocean. We can't control it, but we can laugh at it. Laughter, sweet sweet sweet laughter, is something humans can do that the ocean can't. I often run into stuff that imagines humans as these small things that seem/feel powerless amongst the vastness of everything else. This poem sort of flips that. While we are not vast/powerful in the sense that the ocean is, we have access to something (laughter) that the ocean doesn't have access to. The ocean can't laugh, a star can't laugh, the wind can't laugh, lightning can't laugh, the essentially endless realms of outer space can't laugh. But you and I can!
ReplyDelete