Thursday, May 06, 2010

Gin and Tonic when the world is dark and dank.....

Do you remember, the one time that you were a kid, and during a power outage (we called it load-shedding), the floor became your deep dark forest, the sofa your mountain and in the dark, you were a hunter waiting for your prey.


Cut the scene to a few years back, when as an adult, you found that what was promised was not kept, that dreams had a rude habit of shattering into a thousand pieces, that your heroes had feet of clay and that the music was never the same. It during those deep, dark, dank times, like a ray of flickering candle light in a stormy night, you read or see something that helps you pull through. Here is my gin and tonic. It has now become famous a the movie, but it was always a personal favorite. The poet is William Ernest Henley, the Poem is "Invictus", latin for unconquered.


Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.