At another point in my blogging life, i had posted this. must have been some other calamity/ disaster/terror strike.

I came across an old poem of [tag]Khalil Gibran[/tag] – used to read him when i was a student. it was the in thing to do in those days. and then when i went into work, i kind of left all that behind.

last week i found an old note book in which i had written down my favourite pieces in literature. hand written. and this stood out and stared at me.

Today’s real politics is so well described by a man who lived in the last century.

Here in full is the piece.

Pity The Nation – Khalil Gibran (The Garden of the Prophet, 1934)

Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.

Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave,
eats a bread it does not harvest, and drinks a wine that flows not from its own winepress.

Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero, and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.
Pity the nation that despises a passion in its dream, yet submits in its awakening.

Pity the nation that raises not its voice save when it walks in a funeral,
boasts not except among its ruins, and will rebel not save when its neck is laid
between the sword and the block.

Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox, whose philosopher is a juggler,
and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking.

Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpetingsand farewells him with hootings,
only to welcome another with trumpetings once again.

Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years and whose strong men are yet in the cradle.

Pity the nation divided into fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation

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