The headstrong spirit
Flashes forth with harmful bane.²
If you crave speed then you will never arrive.³
They Suffer more than necessary
Who suffer before it is Necessary.⁴
Defer thy Flight a moment still
To Clean thy wing with careful bill.⁵
We slow down the tune, we never liked it fast—
They want to arrive soon, we want to arrive Last.⁶
Our pace takes sudden Awe—
Our feet—reluctant—lead—⁷
How do we tell the Turtle
That we have earned its Slowness?⁸
Not hurrying, the Purposeless life misses nothing:
For it’s only when there’s no goal and no rush that
All the senses are fully open to Receive the world.⁹
In our Patience—Possess we our Souls.¹⁰
¹ Bon Iver, Minnesota, WI
² Bias tr. Robert Drew Hicks, Laërtius’ Lives of the Eminent Philosophers
³ Confucius tr. Edward Slingerland, Analects 13.17
⁴ Seneca tr. Richard M. Gummere, Moral letters to Lucilius 98
⁵ Edna St. Vincent Millay, The Fledgling
⁶ Leonard Cohen, Slow
⁷ Emily Dickinson, Our Journey Had Advanced
⁸ Pablo Neruda tr. original, Book of Questions
⁹ Alan Watts, The Way of Zen
¹⁰ Luke 21:19 (Kings James)