In Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer, Brother David Steindl-Rast uses a great deal of poetry to get at his ideas. He includes several “grooks” from a Danish scientist named Piet Hein (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piet_Hein_(scientist). Some of his poetry is collected online, and this is a compilation from several sources, mostly: http://www.leptonica.com/cachedpages/grooks/grooks.html. Enjoy Hein’s humor and his wisdom:
ARS BREVIS
There is
one art,
no more,
no less:
to do
all things
with art-
lessness.
PROBLEMS
Problems worthy
of attack
prove their worth
by hitting back.
THE ETERNAL TWINS
Taking fun
as simply fun
and earnestness
in earnest
shows how thoroughly
thou none
of the two
discernest.
CONSOLATION GROOK
Losing one glove
is certainly painful,
but nothing
compared to the pain,
of losing one,
throwing away the other,
and finding
the first one again.
T. T. T.
Put up in a place
where it’s easy to see
the cryptic admonishment
T. T. T.
When you feel how depressingly
slowly you climb,
it’s well to remember that
Things Take Time.
OMNISCIENCE
Knowing what
thou knowest not
is in a sense
omniscience.
SIMPLY ASSISTING GOD
I am a humble artist
moulding my earthly clod,
adding my labour to nature’s,
simply assisting God.
Not that my effort is needed;
yet somehow, I understand,
my maker has willed it that I too should have
unmoulded clay in my hand.
HINT AND SUGGESTION
Admonitory grook addressed to youth.
The human spirit sublimates
the impulses it thwarts;
a healthy sex life mitigates
the lust for other sports.
MANKIND
Men, said the Devil,
are good to their brothers:
they don’t want to mend
their own ways, but each other’s.
NAIVE —
Naive you are
if you believe
life favours those
who aren’t naive.
THE MIRACLE OF SPRING
We glibly talk
of nature’s laws
but do things have
a natural cause?
Black earth turned into
yellow crocus
is undiluted
hocus-pocus.
DREAM INTERPRETATION
Simplified.
Everything’s either
concave or -vex,
so whatever you dream
will be something with sex.
PRAYER
to the sun above the clouds.
Sun that givest all things birth,
shine on everything on earth!
If that’s too much to demand,
shine at least on this our land.
If even that’s too much for thee,
shine at any rate on me.
CIRCUMSCRIPTURE
As Pastor X steps out of bed
he slips a neat disguise on:
that halo round his priestly head
is really his horizon.
SOCIAL MECHANISM
When people always
try to take
the very smallest
piece of cake
how can it also
always be
that that’s the one
that’s left for me?
A TOAST
The soul may be a mere pretence,
the mind makes very little sense.
So let us value the appeal
of that which we can taste and feel.
ON PROBLEMS
Our choicest plans
have fallen through,
our airiest castles
tumbled over,
because of lines
we neatly drew
and later neatly
stumbled over.
AN ETHICAL GROOK
I see
and I hear
and I speak no evil;
I carry
no malice
within my breast;
yet quite without
wishing
a man to the Devil
one may be
permitted
to hope for the best.
LILAC TIME
The lilacs are flowering, sweet and sublime,
with a perfume that goes to the head;
and lovers meander in prose and rhyme,
trying to say —
for the thousandth time —
wha’s easier done than said.
THE DOUBLE-DOOR EFFECT
Double doors are justified
because they’re comfortably wide.
Therefore you only half undo’em;
and therefore nothing can get through ’em.
FORETASTE WITH AFTERTASTE
Corinna’s scanty evening dress
reveals her charms to an excess
which makes a fellow lust for less.
MAJORITY RULE
His party was the Brotherhood of Brothers,
and there were more of them than of the others.
That is, they constituted that minority
which formed the greater part of the majority.
Within the party, he was of the faction
that was supported by the greater fraction.
And in each group, within each group, he sought
the group that could command the most support.
The final group had finally elected
a triumvirate whom they all respected.
Now, of these three, two had final word,
because the two could overrule the third.
One of these two was relatively weak,
so one alone stood at the final peak.
He was: THE GREATER NUMBER of the pair
which formed the most part of the three that were
elected by the most of those whose boast
it was to represent the most of the most
of most of most of the entire state —
or of the most of it at any rate.
He never gave himself a moment’s slumber
but sought the welfare of the greater number.
And all people, everywhere they went,
knew to their cost exactly what it meant
to be dictated to by the majority.
But that meant nothing, — they were the minority.
EXPERTS
Experts have
their expert fun
ex cathedra
telling one
just how nothing
can be done.
ATOMYRIADES
Nature, it seems, is the popular name
for milliards and milliards and milliards
of particles playing their infinite game
of billiards and billiards and billiards.
ROAD SENSE
God save us, now they’re murdering
another winding road,
and another lovely countryside
will take another load
of pantechnicon and car and motorbike.
They’re busy making biger roads,
and better roads and more,
so that people can discover
even faster than before
that everything is everywhere alike.
OUR GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT
We must expect posterity
to view with some asperity
the marvels and the wonders
we’re passing on to it;
but it should change its attitude
to one of heartfelt gratitude
when thinking of the blunders
we didn’t quite commit.
THE TRUE DEFENCE
The only defence
that is more than pretence
is to act on the fact
that there is no defence.
PAST PLUPERFECT
The past, — well, it’s just like
our Great-Aunt Laura,
who cannot or will not perceive
that though she is welcome,
and though we adore her,
yet now it is time to leave.
MY FAITH IN DOCTORS
My faith in doctors
is immense.
Just one thing spoils it;
their pretence
of authorised
omniscience.
DEFENCE WANTED
In International
Consequences
the players must reckon
to reap what they’ve sown.
We have a defence
against other defences,
but what’s to defend us
against our own?
GETTING DOWN TO FUNDAMENTALS
It will steadily shrink,
our earthly abode,
until antiode stands
upon antipode.
Then, soles together,
the planet gone,
we’ll know the ground
that we rest upon.
GROOK TO STIMULATE GRATITUDE
in sour rationalists.
As things so
very often are
intelligence
won’t get you far.
So be glad
you’ve got more sense
than you’ve got
intelligence.
MISSING LINK
Man’s a kind
of Missing Link,
fondly thinking
he can think.
THE ROAD TO WISDOM
The road to wisdom? — Well, it’s plain
and simple to express:
Err
and err
and err again
but less
and less
and less.
THAT IS THE QUESTION
Hamlet Anno Domini.
Co-existence
or no existence.
BRIDGE OR TUNNEL?
Channel project.
A tunnel would be possible,
a bridge would also do,
but wouldn’t it be better to
amalgamate the two?
Let bridge and tunnel undulate
in waves from shore to shore,
keeping green the memories
of those who went before.
LOSING FACE
The noble art of losing face
may one day save the human race
and turn into eternal merit
what weaker minds would call disgrace.
A PSYCHOLOGICAL TIP
Whenever you’re called on to make up your mind,
and you’re hampered by not having any,
the best way to solve the dilemma, you’ll find,
is simply by spinning a penny.
No — not so that chance shall decide the affair
while you’re passively standing there moping;
but the moment the penny is up in the air,
you suddenly know what you’re hoping.
OUT OF TIME
A holiday thought.
My old clock used to tell the time
and subdivide diurnity;
but now it’s lost both hands and chime
and only tells eternity.
MORE HASTE —
Inscription for a monument at the crossroads.
Here lies, extinguished in his prime,
a victim of modernity:
but yesterday he hadn’t the time —
and now he has eternity.
A WORD TO THE WISE
Let the world pass in its time-ridden race;
never get caught in its snare.
Remember, the only acceptable case
for being in any particular place
is having no business there.
MEETING THE EYE
You’ll probably find
that it suits your book
to be a bit cleverer
than you look.
Observe that the easiest
method by far
is to look a bit stupider
than you are.
IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN
A poet should be of the
old-fahioned meaningless brand:
obscure, esoteric, symbolic, —
the critics demand it;
so if there’s a poem of mine
that you do understand
I’ll gladly explain what it means
till you don’t understand it.
THE CASE FOR OBSCURITY
On Thoughts and Words I.
If no thought
your mind does visit,
make your speech
not too explicit.
LEST FOOLS SHOULD FAIL
True wisdom knows
it must comprise
some nonsense
as a compromise,
lest fools shouls fail
to find it wise.
AN ODE TO MODESTY
Talking of successful rackets
modesty deserves a mention.
Exclamation marks in brackets
never fail to draw attention.
GROOK ON LONG-WINDED AUTHORS
Long-winded writers I abhor,
and glib, prolific chatters;
give me the ones who tear and gaw
their hair and pens to tatters:
who find heir writing such a chore
they only write what matters.
THE CURE FOR EXHAUSTION
Sometimes, exhausted
with toil and endeavour,
I wish I could sleep
for ever and ever;
but then this reflection
my longing allays:
I shall be doing it
one of these days.
I’D LIKE —
I’d like to know
what this whole show
is about
before it’s out.
MAKING SENSE
Life makes senses
and who could doubt it,
if we have
no doubt about it.
A MOMENT’S THOUGHT
As eternity
is reckoned
there’s a lifetime
in a second.
(for Expo 67)
We travel where ever mankind reigns
and find good men in all the worlds domains
and recognize them as a kind of Danes.
WHAT ARE YOU?
The way to grow grand
is not: to demand
In life’s every field
you are what you yield.
THE EGOCENTRICS
People are self-centered
to a nauseous degree.
They will keep on about themselves
while I’m explaining me.
MOTIVATION OF TOASTS FOR A STEADFAST CHARACTER
Your steadfast character appeals
to frequent toasts, methinks:
you never eat except at meals
-nor drink ‘twixt drinks.
THRIFT
Nobody can be lucky all the time;
so when your luck deserts you in some fashion
don’t think you’ve been abandoned in your prime,
but rather that you’re saving up your ration.
CAPACITY
A contribution to the psychology of disappointment
Some people live
in a dream of what’ll
allow them to
live their dream:
they solemnly hold out
a half-pint bottle
and ask for
a pint of cream.
A MAXIM FOR VIKINGS
Here is a fact
that should help you fight
a bit longer:
Things that don’t act-ually kill you outright
make you stronger.
THAT WEARY FEELING
Do you know that weary feeling
when your mind is strangely strangled
and your head is like a ball of wool
that’s very, very tangled;
and the tempo of your thinking
must be lenient and mild,
as though you were explaining
to a very little child.
ONE’S OWN WEATHER
You’re squandering
spleen on your brothers,
and wasting
good self-pity too,
if you think
that there’s sun on the others
whenever it’s raining on you.
TWO PASSIVISTS
Eradicate the optimist
who takes the easy view
that human values will persist
no matter what we do.
Annihilate the pessimist
whose ineffectual cry
is that the goal’s already missed
however hard we try.
THE CENTRAL POINT
A philosophistry
I am the Universe’s Centre.
No subtle sceptics can confound me;
for how can other viewpoints enter,
when all the rest is all around me?
MOUSE AND MAN
A relativistic grook on co-existence
A human being sharing with a mouse.
Each thinks himself the master of the house.
In fact, of course, each occupier’s place is
the other’s insulating interspaces.
LOOK AND THOU SHALT FIND
Foes
of what’s cooking
see no worth behind it.
Those
that are looking
for nothing – will find it.
THREE FACTS ABOUT TRAFFIC
Three facts, quite easy,
should be known to all
would-be arrivers
who set out on wheels:
that roads are greasy,
safety margins small,
and fellow drivers
fellow imbeciles.
VITA BREVIS
A lifetime
is more
than
sufficiently long
for people to get what there is of it
wrong.
TAUGHT
We are taught to live,
we are
taught to feel.
We are taught to conform and conceal.
We are taught so well
what we
ought to feel
that we cannot feel what we feel.
ETERNITY AND THE CLOCK
A homage to finity
Eternity’s one of those mental blocks-
the concept is inconceivable.
The clock concedes it in ticks and tocks,
belittled, belaboured, believable.
Each passing moment is seized and chewed
with argument incontestable.
Premasticated, like baby food,
eternity is digestible.
ASTRO-GYMNASTICS
Do-it-yourself grook
Go on a starlit night,
stand on your head,
leave your feet dangling
outwards into space,
and let the starry
firmament you tread
be, for the moment,
your elected base.
Feel Earth’s colossal weight
of ice and granite,
of molten magma,
water, iron, and lead;
and briefly hold
this strangely solid planet
balanced upon
your strangely solid head.
LIVING IS —
Living is
a thing you do
now or never —
which do you?
TWIN MYSTERY
To many people artists seem
undisciplined and lawless.
Such laziness, with such great gifts,
seems little short of crime.
One mystery is how they make
the things they make so flawless;
another, what they’re doing with
their energy and time.
DRAWING NEAR
To Saul Steinberg
You draw
the near things
nearer
by making
clear things
queerer.
THOUGHTS AND THINGS
I concentrate on
the concentric rings
produced by my pen
in the ink.
The thing that distinguishes
thoughts from things
is that thoughts are harder
to think.
LAST THINGS FIRST
Solutions to problems
are easy to find:
the problem’s a great
contribution.
What’s truly an art
is to wring from your mind
a problem to fit
a solution.
ON BEING ONESELF
Good resolution grook
If virtue
can’t be mine alone
at least my faults
can be my own.
THE TYRANNY OF THINGS
I am trying to rule
over ten thousand things
which I thought
belonged to me.
All of a sudden
a doubt take wings:
Do they…
or could it be..?
A hardhanded hunch
in my mind’s ear rings
from whence
such suspicions may stem:
that if you posses
more than just eight things
then y o u
are possessed by t h e m
UNPLUMBED DEPTHS
Grook on philo-sophistical and other -isms
Philo-sophisticism
with hypnotic
effect affects
the boobies that abound:
being so bottomlessly
idiotic
that even they
can see it profound.
ORIGINALITY
Original thought
is a straightforward process.
It’s easy enough
when you know what to do.
You simply combine
in appropriate doses
the blatantly false
and the patently true.
WHAT LOVE IS LIKE
Love is like
a pineapple,
sweet and
undefinable.
WISDOM IS –
Wisdom is
the booby prize
given when you’ve been
unwise.
THE OPPOSITE VIEW
For many system shoppers it’s
a good-for-nothing system
that classifies as opposites
stupidity and wisdom.
because by logic-choppers it’s
accepted with avidity:
stupidity’s true opposite’s
the opposite stupidity.
WANTING TO BE ABLE TO
‘Impossibilities’ are good
not to attach that label to;
since, correctly understood,
if we wanted to, we would
be able to be able to.
WHO IS LEARNED?
A definition
One who, consuming midnight oil
in studies diligent and slow,
teaches himself, with painful toil,
the things that other people know.
EVERYBODY’S WORTH KNOWING
It’s some sort of comfort
to get the gist
of certain impertinents
I could list –
so that you know what you
haven’t missed.
MEMENTO VIVERE
Love while you’ve got
love to give.
Live while you’ve got
life to live.
GROOK ABOUT FAITH, HOPE, ETC.
She gave me hope
she gave me love,
with bounty unalloyed.
But what she had of faith,
alas,
she gave to Freud.
THE CIVILIZED ART
Two types that had far better
leave to their betters
the civilized art
of exchanging letters
are those who disdain
to make any response,
and those who infallibly
answer at once.
PRESCRIPTION
A bit
of virtue
will never
hurt you.
THE FIRST PRINCIPLE OF GASTRONOMY
There’s a rule for proper doses
in the dinner-eaters lore:
one should stop the filling process
while one still has room for more.
And if someone at the table
had reminded me before –
Hallelujah! I’d be able
to absorb a little more.
TIMING TOAST
Grook on how to char for yourself
There’s an art of knowing when.
Never try to guess.
Toast until it smokes and then
twenty seconds less.
HANDSOME IS –
Portrait-grook
He’s gallantry personified;
in fact
his brochures ought to read:
SATISFACTION GUARANTEED –
or your virginity returned
intact.
IDLE FELLOW
Portrait-grook
Professsor Blooby doesn’t see the fun
in what his fellow-man call relaxation.
He isn’t ignorant of how it’s done,
but lacks the necessary application.
THOUGHTS ON A STATION PLATFORM
It ought to be plain
how little you gain
by getting excited
and vexed.
You’ll always be late
for the previous train,
and always in time
for the next
A DIPLOMATIC COMPROMISE
A fellow I know
can get mountains to move
and all opposition
appeases:
he preaches what God
cannot help but approve,
and does
what the Devil he pleases.
NOVELTY
For me there is something ineffably new
in every new moment’s arising;
and even the things I habitually do
have qualities new and surprising.
There’s nothing that happens that happened before
in exactly that way in its life.
When you’re playing the piano, it’s rather a bore;
but it’s nice when you’re kissing your wife.
ABREAST
He who aims
to keep abreast
is for ever
second best.
REMEDIES’ REMEDIES
Pills are useful
against ills
and against
too many pills.
WE DO OUR BEST
Or do we?
Modern man
has the skill;
he can do
what he will.
But alas –
being man
he will do
what he can.
CHEAP EATERY
Whenever I’m scared by the state of my purse
I dine at the ‘Gold-Digger’s Claim’,
where the food is so out of comparison worse
you forget that the price is the same.
THE FINAL STEP
If they made diving boards
six inches shorter –
think how much sooner
you’d be in the water.
SIMILARITY
Commutative Law
No cow’s like a horse,
and no horse like a cow.
That’s one similarity
anyhow.
THE PARADOX OF LIFE
Philosophical grook.
A bit beyond perception’s reach
I sometimes believe I see
that Life is two locked boxes, each
containing the other’s key.
BUDGETING: THE FIRST LAW
If you want to know
where your money went,
you must spend it quickly
before it’s spent.
ON AN ASHTRAY
When your thirst
and hunger cease,
may your ashes
rest in peace.
GOOD ADVICE
Shun advice
at any price –
that’s what I call
good advice
OH BOTHER!
What with one thing
and another
people bother.
With a third thing
and a fourth it
isn’t worth it.
TIME
Does time exist?
I gravely doubt it.
But gosh, what should we do
without it?
CANDLE WISDOM
If you knew
what you will know
when your candle
has burnt low,
it would greatly
ease your plight
while your candle
still burns bright.
WHAT PEOPLE MAY THINK
Some people cower
and wince and shrink,
owing to fear of
what people may think.
There is one answer
to worries like these:
people may think
what the devil they please.
(on Denmark)
Denmark seen from a foreign land
looks but like a grain of sand.
Denmark as we Danes conceive it
is so big you wont believe it.
(?)
Those who have no wisdom yet count their wealth by what they get.
you who have the grace to live: count your wealth by what you give!
ABOUT DENMARK
Why not let us compromise
about Denmark’s proper size,
which will truly please us all,
since it’s bigger than it’s small.
NOTHING IS INDiSPENSABLE
Grook to warn the universe against megalomania
The universe may be as great as they say.
But it wouldn’t be missed if it didn’t exist.
TIME AND ETERNITY
Where the woods and ploughlands
of tradition and modernity
run into the never-ending
deserts of eternity,
there I have my daily task
while time smoothly passes,
spooning the eternal sands
into hour glass.
INVESTMENT POLICY
Anxieties yield
at a negative rate,
increasing in smallness
the longer they wait.
A WORD OF ENCOURAGEMENT
Stomach-ache can be a curse;
heart-ache may be even worse;
so thank Heaven on your knees
if you’ve got but one of these.
THOSE WHO KNOW
Those who always
know what’s best
are
a universal pest.
THE WISDOM OF THE SPHERES
How instructive
is a star!
It can teach us
from afar
just how small
each other are.
IT ISN’T ENOUGH
One paramount truth
our society smothers
in petty concern
with position and pelf:
It isn’t enough
to exasperate others;
you’ve got to remember
to gladden yourself.
SMALL THINGS AND GREAT
He that lets
the small things bind him
leaves the great
undone behind him.
BRAVE
To be brave is to behave
bravely when your heart is faint.
So you can be really brave
only when you really ain’t.
SATURATION
The heavens are draining,
it’s raining and raining,
and everything couldn’t be wetter,
and things are so bad
that we ought to be glad:
because now they can only get better.
THE STATE
Nature, our father and mother,
gave us all we have got.
The state, our elder brother,
swipes the lot.
PRESENCE OF MIND
You’ll conquer the present
suspiciously fast
if you smell of the future —
and stink of the past.
MAKING AN EFFORT
Our so-called limitations, believe,
apply to faculties we don’t apply.
We don’t discover what we can’t achieve
until we make an effort not to try.
CONSTITUTIONAL POINT
Power corrupts, where
as sound opposition
builds up our free
democratic tradition.
One thing would make a
democracy flower:
having a strong opposition —
in power.
RHYME AND REASON
There was an old woman
who lived in a shoe.
She had so many children.
She didn’t know what to do.
But try as she would
she could never detect
which was the cause
and which the effect.
WIDE ROAD
To make a name for learning
when other roads are barred,
take something very easy
and make it very hard.
THE ONLY SOLUTION
We shall have to evolve
problem-solvers galore–
since each problem they solve
creates ten problems more.
REFLECTION ON SIZE
Small people often overrate
the charm of being tall;
which is, that you appreciate
the charm of being small.
A REPROOF
Grook in answer to a long explanatory letter
In view of your manner
of spending your days
I hope you may learn,
before ending them,
that the effort you spend
on defending your ways
could be better spent on
amending them.
THE LITTLE MERMAID’S LITTLE SISTER
The Little Mermaid’s Little Sister
was also partly girl and cod
though in a way which those who kissed her
found odd.
…but which, well worth to mention,
though at first sight absurd,
I, with my fond intention,
preferred.
STONE IN SHOE
If a nasty jagged stone
gets into your shoe,
thank the Lord it came alone —
what if it were two?
THE UNATTAINABLE IDEAL
We ought to live
each day as though
it were our last day
here below.
But if I did, alas,
I know
it would have killed me
long ago.
A TIP
to members of the literary profession
Those who can write
have a lot to learn
from those bright enough
not to.
THE ULTIMATE WISDOM
Philosophers
must ultimately find
their true perfection
in knowing all
the follies of mankind
— by introspection.
AND A FEW OTHERS:
GROOK ABOUT FAITH, LOVE, ETC.
She gave me hope
She gave me love
With bounty unalloyed.
But what she had of faith,
Alas,
She gave to Freud.
Who am I
To deny
That, maybe,
God is me?
Half a truth is often aired
And often proved correct
It’s sensible to be prepared
For what you don’t expect.
The other half is minimized
Or totally neglected
It’s wiser still to be surprised
By what you most expected.
