Playful Wisdom, Grooks by Piet Hein

This is my favorite one
(or maybe the one that has stuck in my head over the years):

SIMPLY ASSISTING GOD
I am a humble artist
moulding my earthly clod,
adding my labour to nature's,
simply assisting God.

Not that my effort is needed;
yet somehow, I understand,
my maker has willed it that I too should have
unmoulded clay in my hand.

But they are all so wonderful
that it is hard to have a favorite one.
Here are a few more that I love.

ARS BREVIS
There is
one art,
no more,
no less:
to do
all things
with art-
lessness.

PROBLEMS
Problems worthy
  of attack
prove their worth
  by hitting back.

MANKIND
Men, said the Devil,
are good to their brothers:
they don’t want to mend
their own ways, but each other's.

ATOMYRIADES
Nature, it seems, is the popular name
for milliards and milliards and milliards
of particles playing their infinite game
of billiards and billiards and billiards.

ROAD SENSE
God save us, now they're murdering
     another winding road,
and another lovely countryside
     will take another load
of pantechnicon and car and motorbike.
     They're busy making biger roads,
     and better roads and more,
so that people can discover
     even faster than before
     that everything is everywhere alike.

ON PROBLEMS
Our choicest plans
     have fallen through,
our airiest castles
     tumbled over,
because of lines
     we neatly drew
and later neatly
     stumbled over.

T. T. T.
Put up in a place
where it's easy to see
the cryptic admonishment
     T. T. T.

When you feel how depressingly
slowly you climb,
it's well to remember that
     Things Take Time.

IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN
A poet should be of the
                  old-fahioned meaningless brand:
obscure, esoteric, symbolic, --
              the critics demand it;
so if there's a poem of mine
              that you do understand
I'll gladly explain what it means
              till you don't understand it.

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