your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.— by Charles Bukowski
The gods wait to delight in you. Oh, how I love that line. I’d forgotten how much I enjoy this poem (and really all of Bukowski’s writing) until I was going through one of my old notebooks. It’s interesting how he uses both the word light and delight in this poem. I never really thought about the similarities between the two words. English is a strange language. Delight means to please someone immensely–charm, enchant, captivate, entrance, thrill. One of my favorite subjects in school was entomology. Yeah, I’m a nerd.
Middle English: from Old French delitier (verb), delit (noun), from Latin delectare ‘to charm’, frequentative of delicere. The -gh- was added in the 16th century by association with light.
I think I first learned the word delight from the Bible. Something along the lines of “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” In the Old Testament one of the most common Hebrew terms for delight was hepes which meant “to bend towards, to be inclined towards [an object or person]. Go towards the light.
Happy Mardi Gras! Laissez les bons temps rouler!”
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