Failure and Success

What is failure? What success?
Failure has been
a frequent visitor in whose company
you stumbled on the golden green,
gateless, deathless grass I wear, shown
a radiance preceding all that’s known.
What has failure been except
the Lover of lovers, your longing nursed,
Lover of lovers honing your thirst
and hunger for all that matters in the end?
Had success been a steadier friend,
it might have seduced, dizzied, distracted you.
Though all the world had respected you,
your peers and friends saying you had it all,
still, you would have had nothing at all.
An ocean bubble that makes too much of foam
still has nothing in forgetting home.
To try to anchor in the world of form is jail;
to pedestalize success is to fail.

Share: