Better Spent

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.

Piet Hein (1905-1996)

In a Hurry?

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.

Piet Hein (1905-1996)

Perspective

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.

- by my favorite poet/mathematician/game inventor Piet Hein :-)

OH! And here's another I hadn't seen before - just now found it on a Norwegian blog. I'm not sure what the standard English translation is, but this sounds good to me!

Husk at glemme bagateller.
Husk at nemme hvad det gælder.
Husk at elske, mens du tør det.
Husk at leve, mens du gør det.

A very free translation:

Remember to forget the unimportant details.
Remember to understand what is important.
Remember to love, while you still dare to.
Remember to live, while you are still alive.

Line Drawing

Our choicest plans
have fallen through,
our airiest castles
tumbled over,
because of lines
we neatly drew
and later neatly
stumbled over.

On Problems, a Grook by Piet Hein (1905-1996)

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.

A Grook by Piet Hein (1905-1996)

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.

- Piet Hein (1905-1996)

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.

- Piet Hein (1905-1996)

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.

--Piet Hein (1905 - 1996)

For Raymond :-)

Lines that are parallel
meet at Infinity!"
Euclid repeatedly,
heatedly,
urged.
Until he died,
and so reached that vicinity:
in it he
found that the darned things
diverged.

-Piet Hein (1905-1996)

(poem slightly abridged)

Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?

NOTHING IS INDESPENSABLE
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.

-Piet Hein (1905-1996)

Mankind

Men, said the Devil,
are good to their brothers:
they don’t want to mend
their own ways, but each other's.

-- Piet Hein (1905 - 1996)

Out of Time

OUT OF TIME

My old clock used to tell the time
and subdivide diurnity;
but now it's lost both hands and chime
and only tells eternity.

Piet Hein (1905-1996)

More Know it All

Well, I just came across another Grook by Piet Hein that expresses the other half of my "Know it All" comment. I sure would have liked to meet him!

THOSE WHO KNOW

Those who always
know what’s best
are
a universal pest.

Know it All -- Follow Up

On April 5 I mused about having been omniscient as a teen but finding I no longer know everything - and the realizations that have followed - despair and then reality.

I happened across the following poem this week, another Grook by Piet Hein. To some degree he expresses what I was getting at but much more briefly and elegantly. See what you think.

OMNISCIENCE

Knowing what
thou knowest not
is in a sense
omniscience.

A Celebration of Grooks

Once again, here's to short poetry! (For more on author Piet Hein and Grooks, see "Poetry to Live by" posted July 22.)

THE EGOCENTRICS

People are self-centered
to a nauseous degree.
They will keep on about themselves
while I'm explaining me.

VITA BREVIS

A lifetime
is more
than
sufficiently long
for people to get what there is of it
wrong.

BUDGETING: THE FIRST LAW

If you want to know
where your money went,
you must spend it quickly
before it's spent.

ARS BREVIS

There is
one art,
no more,
no less:
to do
all things
with art-
lessness.

Poetry to Live by

The road to wisdom? -- Well, it's plain
and simple to express:
Err
and err
and err again
but less
and less
and less.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

Both of these poems were written by mathematicians.

Surprised?

The first was written by Danish mathematician Piet Hein (1905-1996). The second was written by Persian mathematician Omar Khayyám (1048-1131). These mathematicians were by no means "one hit wonders" as poets. Piet Hein called his poems Grooks and published a number of volumes of them. Omar Khayyám's poems are known as rubaiyat (the Arabic term for quatrain or four-line stanza). He is believed to have written about a thousand of them - a thousand! You may be familiar with a line from another of The Rubaiyat: "A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread - and Thou."