We're only watching the skies
Hoping for the best
But expecting the worst
Are you going to drop the bomb on us?
Let us stay young or let us stay forever
Don't want the powers
But we never say never
Sitting in a sandpit,
Life is a short trip
The music's for the sad men
Can you imagine when we face this world?
As we turn our faces into the sun
Praising our leaders,
We're getting in tune
The music's played by the madmen
Forever young, I wanna be forever young
Do you really want to live forever
Forever - and ever

Some are like water,
Some are like the heat
Some are like melodies and some are the beat
Sooner or later they all will be gone
They don't stay young
It's so hard to get old without a cause
I don't want to perish like a faded rose
Youth's like diamonds in the sand
And diamonds are forever
So many advantage could have happened today
So many songs we were gonna play
So many dreams when you're out in the cold
Living forever

Forever young...

Spoken:
Didn't I not tell you
That you shouldn't ever push your luck?
No, I'm very sorry, there is no pity now

-----"Forever Young", Alphaville

"I Hope You Dance"
(Lee Ann Womack)

I hope you never lose your sense of wonder,
You get your fill to eat but always keep that hunger,
May you never take one single breath for granted,
GOD forbid love ever leave you empty handed,
I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean,
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens,
Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.

I hope you dance....I hope you dance.

I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance,
Never settle for the path of least resistance
Livin' might mean takin' chances but they're worth takin',
Lovin' might be a mistake but it's worth makin',
Don't let some hell bent heart leave you bitter,
When you come close to sellin' out reconsider,
Give the heavens above more than just a passing glance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.

I hope you dance....I hope you dance.
I hope you dance....I hope you dance.
(Time is a wheel in constant motion always rolling us along,
Tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder where those years have gone.)

I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean,
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens,
Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.

Dance....I hope you dance.
I hope you dance....I hope you dance.
I hope you dance....I hope you dance..
(Time is a wheel in constant motion always rolling us along
Tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder where those years have gone)

Is It Rain Is


Is it rain is
The mountaintop
Dissolved or at last
Tired of us of our
Aspirations as unsteady
As the sandy rain
Now it's summer

Is it the last
Onset of outcome
So certain it needs
Only the sunlight
In a dark tree
Any shelter at all
Only a while

-----"Is It Rain Is" from Donald Revell's Arcady

Transformations

A lad changed to a shrub in spring,
the shrub into a shepherd boy,
A fine hair to a lyre string,
snow into snow on hair piled high.

And words turn into question signs,
wisdom and fame to old-age lines,
and strings revert to finest hair,
the boy's transformed into a poet
the poet is transformed once more,
becomes the shrub my which he slept
when he loved beauty till he wept.

Whoever falls in love with beauty
will love it to his dying day,
stagger toward it aimlessly,
beauty has feet of charm and grace
in sandals delicate as lace.

And in this metamorphosis
a spell binds him to woman's love,
a single second is enough
like steam in a retort to hiss
obedient to the alchemist
and drops dead as a hunted dove.

Without a stick old age is lame,
the stick turns into anything
in this ceaseless, fantastic game,
perhaps into an angel's wings
now spreading wide for soaring flight
bodyless, painless, feather light


Excerpt from The Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert

Ultimatum

I'm wearied of wearying love, my friend,
Of worry and strain and doubt;
Before we begin, let us view the end,
And maybe I'll do without.
There's never the pang that was worth the tear,
And toss in the night I won't-
So either you do or you don't, my dear,
Either you do or you don't!

The table is ready, so lay your cards
And if they should augur pain,
I'll tender you ever my kind regards
And run for the fastest train.
I haven't the will to be spent and sad;
My heart's to be gay and true-
Then either you don't or you do, my lad,
Either you don't or you do!

-----"Ultimatum" from the collection Death and Taxes, Dorothy Parker

Celebration ... is self-restraint, is attentiveness, is questioning, is meditating, is awaiting, is the step over into the more wakeful glimpse of the wonder -- the wonder that a world is worlding around us at all, that there are beings rather than nothing, that things are and we ourselves are in their midst, that we ourselves are and yet barely know who we are, and barely know that we do not know this."
-----Martin Heidegger