The Orthodox Proverb

 

Work hard, you will get a reward—

It’s drilled deep in childhood soft,

A saying it’s only then,

Simple minds find it the elders’ trick,

Who any way must find fault

and ordain so many things unplayful.

 

The same proverb spreads its tentacles,

Grows it with the body,

Burden it is not now,

But a necessity to survive,

And they obey its command,

What a devil! Free by now.

 

The adults are serious enough

about name, fame and glory,

Dedicate they themselves to a cause,

Create a glass palace so huge,

Crumbles which one day,

Splintered pieces cut through the flesh.

 

The evil survives still,

Now through the sympathetic pout,

Except the sulking self, the universe parrots it,

What can the poor soul do?

If not aspire for the palace again,

Alas, the fate repeats itself most often!

 

Success is rarely the outcome,

If it comes, greater is the endeavour,

somehow doomed to fail another time,

And if not, failure is loosened

from the garb it had taken,

Both lead to the same age-old futility.

 

Battered is failure through pompous words,

To get ready the wounded,

And obey the immortal proverb’s command,

Dies it never, only we perish,

Even the dying is wished to

succeed in the life next!

 

There is no other way,

But to fall in its trap,

It’s supposed to last

even after the death,

If the saying has an exception,

Then please, tell me one!