Acts of Faith

‘Acts of Faith’ is a story of three individuals whose lives are inextricably entangled with one another’s and with the religions they happen to have born in. It is one of the less-known novels of Eric Segal (of ‘Love Story’ fame) and arguably his best. Some good reviews of the book can be found at mouthshut or amazon.

There are a few excellent poetic quotations from religious classics in the book. My favourites is the one given in the very beginning:

Sero te amavi
Pulchritudo tam antiqua et tam nova
Sero te amavi!
Et ecce intus eras
Et ego foris
Et ibi te quaerebam

Too late came I to love thee
O though Beauty both so ancient and so fresh
Too late came I to love thee!
And behold, thou wert within me
And I out of myself
Where I made search for thee

-Saint Augustine, Confessions, 10, 27: CCL 27, 251

And this one is directly from the Holy Bible (Book of Songs of Solomon, Chapter 3):

By night on my bed
I sought him, whom my soul loveth
I sought him, but I found him not...

This reminds me of the great song by the Maestro, Madan Mohan himself, from the movie Dastak, Maii Ri Main Kaase Kahoon Peer Apne Jiya Ki.

Long Live Mysticism.

If Poets Must Have Flags

They
ask for graceful poetry
to decorate their tyranny
poems
to make the hideous picturesque
entrails look like streamers
blood like wine
death like sleep

They
ask for wreaths
to strew murdered men's graves
posies of sweet scented words
to drench away the stench

They
want anger to be buried
in the carved tomb of verse
the people to have music
to fugue human cries of pain
the organ of high mass
to drown out sounds of massacre

They
ask the poet to be
a songbird in cage
a eunuch in a choir
a slave of art
manacling his anguish
in tinkling silver chains

We refuse

We'll go ugly and free
exhuming the corpses
revealing the rot
revealing the holes
ripped by the shot
We'll wrap around our banners
the guts of the dead

If we must have flags
let them always be red

-David Evans

Taken from the following URL: http://www.sadtu.org.za/ev/May2001/poets.htm