Ben Okri poem: As clouds pass above our heads…
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 at 12:49 pmFor the month of January, Booker prize winning author Ben Okri tweeted a poem about time. The poem went out bit by bit, every day for the month, and it can now be read in full below.
As clouds pass above our heads
So time passes through our lives.
Where does it go,
And when it passes,
What do we have to show?
We can plant deeds in time
As gardners plant roses.
We can plant thoughts, or good words too
Especially if they are noble and true.
Time is an act of consciousness:
One of the greatest forces
Of the material world.
We ought to use time
Like emperors of the mind:
Do magic things that the future,
Surprised, will find.
We could change our life today
And seek out a higher way.
The Buddha sat beneath a tree
And from all illusion became free.
And as we travel on this life that is a sea
We can glimpse eternity.
We can join that growing fight
To stop our world being plunged into night.
We can wake to the power of our voice
Change the world with the power of our choice.
But there is nothing we can do
If we don’t begin to think anew.
We are not much more than what we think;
In our minds we swim or sink.
If there is one secret I’d like to share
It’s that we are what we dream
Or what we fear.
So dream a good dream today
And keep it going in every way.
Let each moment of our life
Somehow help the good fight
Or help spread some light.
The wise say life is a dream;
And soon the dream is done.
But what you did in the dream
Is all that counts beneath the sun.
The dream is real, and the real is a dream
Each one of us is a powerful being.
Wake up to what you are,
You are a sun, you are a star.
Wake up to what you can be.
Search, search for a new destiny
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February 21st, 2010 at 3:50 pm
Beautiful, inspiring verse from a master of words! Thank you, Ben Okri.
March 13th, 2010 at 9:42 am
beginning to see the point of twitter. Good to have glimpses into your life when meeting not easy.
Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while
A great wind is bearing me across the sky.
Ojibwa Indians
April 6th, 2010 at 4:32 pm
Thanks for sharing. It’s nice to wake up every now and again from the sleepwalking that life seems to be at the moment.
May 8th, 2010 at 8:25 pm
Dear Ben, it was great to be with you in the PEN NY Festival. I hope you post here the other poem you read there. And I already asked my followers in Tweet to follow you, increasing the living poetry cercle in the net. Thank for this powerfull poem.
June 15th, 2010 at 7:44 pm
I absolutely love this. I saw Mr. Okri in Toronto as well last night. He is a generous man.