One Cannot Make Another Happy

September 15, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is giving, in honor of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, which falls on September 13 and commemorates Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son.

Today’s poem is a psychological poem about the limits of giving.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com.

Yours,

Nick Gordon

One cannot make another happy,

Whatever one might do or say,

For happiness remains a choice

Not even love can hope to sway.

The sacrifice of time and strength

And preference and goods may be

Of help, of course, but cannot calm

The winds that roil a restless sea.

Everything one does, like dust,

Transforms the light in which all live.

But happiness is not a gift

It is within one's power to give.

One can only love, and be

A witness to the life that each

At last must live alone, for good

Or ill beyond a lover's reach.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/onecan.html. For more psychological poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/psychologicalpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Giving.

September 12: Thirty-Five

September 13: Every Moment Sings of Love and Beauty

September 14: Happiness Remains the Drug of Choice

September 15: One Cannot Make Another Happy