'praised be' (or: the festival and the park)

praised be life
praised be youth
praised be beauty and diversity
praised be blue and green
the open sky and breathing leaves
praised be the city and the open fields
which my heart doesn’t need to live
but without which it couldn’t shout for joy
praised be creativity and all the cool people
and the beautiful girls who are young and free
praised be spring
and praised be winter and wilderness
without which my heart wouldn’t learn to need life
to long and drink deep
to hope, even if everything inside and outside seems to tell me it is not,
for something else and more, different and better
praised be inspiration and the anticipation of the road
of life bursting forth in creativity
blasting existing categories and
giving what you knew you couldn’t take and feared you couldn’t get

and praised be the source of all this that is
and of all that is and shall not be
for it is that which I seek
and whom I hope to find
directly and through it all
or else this world holds nothing for me



(I wrote this poem one year ago on one of the first sunny days in the Netherlands, after visiting a music festival on 5th of may, our freedom day, and I sat down in the park in the middle of town, in the gras at the side of the water, and wrote this. It's about enjoying as well as about spirituality)

 

to me this is a poets personal shopping list [ life, beauty, liberty, freedom, nature and the will of man] of important concepts and themes in which to effectively express, one day, in an all encompassing work, at which you have attempted.

it is also a check list of such pure emotions and how to truly give them justice. the great dilemma. to succeed is to be great, to attempt is to be encouraged.