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Best Poems From
DAUBMIR NADIR
(May 1950)
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1.
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Surreal Swallows
Grip my hand, son
And kill all your obsessions
Take my arm, son
And destroy all your compulsions
Hold me close, son
And slay all your delusions
Tear my heart apart, son
And swallow all the love
It contains.
daubmir nadir
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2.
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Aftertaste
You shall not taste of death
For there is no death for you:
You cannot experience
Your own death.
Are you born?
Life and death
Cannot be separated.
You have no chance whatever
Of knowing for yourself
Where one begins
And the other ends.
You can experience the death of another,
But not your own.
Where is death, there is no you.
The only death is physical death;
There is no psychological death.
Why then are you so afraid of death?
- Because there is no you.
daubmir nadir
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3.
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Selfish Love
Genuine love
Is selfishness:
Love doesn't mean
To sacrifice yourself
For others.
It is the exact opposite.
It is truly the most selfish
Experience possible:
It benefits your life in a way
That involves no sacrifice
Of others to yourself or
Of yourself to others.
To love a person is selfish
Because it means that
You value that particular person,
That he or she makes your life better,
That he or she is an intense source of joy
- to you.
A disinterested love
Is a contradiction in terms.
One cannot be neutral
To that which one values.
The time, effort and money
You spend
On behalf of someone you love
Are not sacrifices,
But actions taken
Because his or her happiness
Is crucially important to your own.
Those who argue
That love demands self-denial
Must hold the bizarre belief
That it makes no personal difference
Whether your loved one is healthy or sick,
Feels pleasure or pain,
Is alive or dead.
It is regularly asserted
That love should be unconditional
And that you should
Love everyone as a brother,
- hate the sin, but love the sinner!
Which would have you condemn death camps
But send Hitler a box of swiss chocolates.
Most would agree that
Having sex with a person
One despises is debased.
Yet somehow,
When the same underlying idea
Is applied to love,
Most consider it noble.
Love is far too precious
To be offered
Indiscriminately.
It is above all
In the area of love
That egalitarianism
Ought to be repudiated.
Love represents
An exalted exchange,
- a spiritual exchange -
Between two people
For the purpose of mutual benefit.
You love someone
Because he or she is a value
- a selfish value to you,
As determined by your standards
- just as you are a value to him or her.
It is the view
That you should be given love
Unconditionally -
The view that
You do not deserve it
Any more than some random bum,
The view that it is not a response
To anything particular in you,
The view that it is causeless
- which exemplifies
The most ignoble conception
Of this sublime experience.
The nature of love
Places certain demands
On those who wish to enjoy it.
You must regard yourself
As worthy of being loved.
Those who expect to be loved,
Not because they offer some positive value,
But because they don't
- are parasites.
A person who says:
Love me just because I need it,
Seeks an unearned spiritual value
- in the same way that
A thief seeks unearned wealth.
daubmir nadir
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4.
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Gemini 1: Dreamsnatchers
PEREGRINATOR FAILING
Wandering drifter
You've burnt yourself out -
Seeker of peripatetic dreams
You reached for the sky
And ended up
With a fistful of flies.
CONFRΘRE PERDU
You stole my sinuous chimera
In the evening of youth
Not to return it
But with its skin molted
At the twilight of life.
daubmir nadir
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