The Stolen Child

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's morefully of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,.
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For to world's morefully of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
from a world more full of weeping than you can understand.
x william butler yeats

everyone's caught up in the idea of heaven. even non-religious people. what if there's nothing? what if there's no greater plan? what if the idea of a "soul" is just romantic narcissism and there is NOTHING that happens to your conscious mind after your expiration? you just *end* with your physical body. what if the universe doesn't have any greater spiritual mysteries and it's just a big, cold machine? what if most people in this world are just fooling themselves with the idea that there's any kind of "afterlife" -- and the big punchline is that there's nothing at all...? but imagining that there *is* one makes every day just a little less scary?

funnier still, the number of people who've been killed over conflicting ideas of an afterlife throughout history. everyone's killing everybody else trying to assert their belief about what the afterlife is about; what if everybody's wrong...?

what if, eh...? what if...?

it's like the petrol tanker filled with sand in THE ROAD WARRIOR.

(p.s. wake me up when september ends.)
(p.p.s. eff rico.)