TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED

My Dad spent several Christmases persuading me that Kipling's "Gods of the Copybook Headings" is a wise poem - and, yes, it is. But, to prevent my once plastic opinions becoming too hardened through contact with a stubbornly intransigent reality, I like to read and listen to people who are able to turn things upside down. Inverted, an apparently reliable old saw can be immensely revealing, not to mention hilarious. (I wish I could have some of Oscar Wilde's epigrams tattooed on my arm - impermanent, so I could get a different set once they'd faded.)

At a profound level, Zen Buddhism (and the lyrics to a Phish song I can't remember the title of) use paradoxical koans to drive home the point that reality is illusory and words are even less reliable. (One of my friends makes a habit of seeing truths in apparently contradictory propositions, especially when these purport to be guides to living.)

So I was delighted to rediscover after many years - through a quotation at the top of someone's blog - the magic of William Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The poet speaks some of his own doctrines (his theme: "Energy is Eternal delight") through the Proverbs of Hell, collected from the denizens of that fiery realm:

"Everything possible to be believ'd is an image of truth."

"Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement are roads of genius."

"Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity."

"Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you."

"If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise"

"The hours of folly are measured by the clock, but of wisdom no clock can measure."