Happy Deepavali

Even the smallest  lamps we light today
Spread light and keep the darkness at bay,
The flickering flames and their feeble light
Have a lesson, should we choose to learn it right.

In our own little ways, we may
Emulate the lamps, drive darkness away
Let us then, this Diwali night,
Light up our lamps, let there be light!

Invictus... revisited

Resaw the movie... and the lines keep going around in my head...

Out of the night that covers me
Dark as the pit from pole to pole
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I neither winced nor cried aloud
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.