Long after Chamfort*

Wit in fools has something shocking
Like cabhorses galloping.

-----

The trouble with tragedy is the fuss it makes
About life and death and other tuppeny aches.

-----

Better on your arse than on your feet,
Flat on your back than either, dead than the lot.**

-----

Live and clean forget from day to day,
Mop life up as fast as it dribbles away.

-----

Ask of all-healing, all-consoling thought
Salve and solace for the woe it wrought.

-----

Hope is a knave befools us evermore,
Which till I lost no happiness was mine.
I strike from hell's to grave on heaven's door:
All hope abandon ye who enter in.***

-----

sleep till death
healeth
come ease
this life disease

-----

how hollow heart and full
of filth thou art

- Samuel Beckett, 1975-76

(translated by the author)

-----

* adaptaions of the maxims of Sebastien Chamfort
**Refers to an A.E. Houseman poem?
***From the original French: "Je mettrais volontiers sur la porte du paradis le vers que le Dante a mis sur celle de l'enfer: Lasciate ogni speranza etc."

- Samuel Beckett, 1975-76
(translated by the author)