A Bouquet of Roses for Life and Its Noble Ideals – by Dr. Ghazai Dira Al-Tai

News is crossword puzzles, and days are butting rams, and rain falls only drop by drop, and students carrying their heavy bags fill the dusty street with the fragrance of a new morning, and my hours are horses running alone on the gray carpet of minutes and seconds without purpose, and I run after them in vain, and rivers with their meager water make me drag sighs over the dried mint on the banks, and I say without boasting: I do not want to live in that region that Theodore Roosevelt described as (gray) where there is no victory and no defeat, because I, like Abraham Lincoln (want those who know me well to say of me that he removed thorns to plant flowers wherever he thought flowers might grow), am rushing toward life, and my rush is blind, and the blind rush toward life according to Schopenhauer is (the will) integrated with knowledge and consciousness, and here I stand, I stop whenever I walk, and I ask myself and others about: values and positions, for man is defined by values and positions, and everything else is debris, and I say to those who build their castles in the air: just make their foundations on the ground so they are suitable for living and life, life: what a word complete in splendor like a royal palace, and surpassing in beauty like a lush garden, and it is before and after this a collector of contradictions, for it is a uniter that divides, harsh yet tender, innocent and accused, exile and refuge, bliss and hell, and it is without elaboration: the thing and its opposite.

Life is mysterious like a forest, complex like a series of ropes knotted in an irregular way, and difficult to understand like a pre-Islamic poem, containing pain and pleasure, happiness and misery, joy and sorrow, connection and separation, linking and cutting, acceptance and rejection, and the example of this world according to Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib (may God honor his face) is like a snake, soft to the touch, but poison is settled in its belly, the naive ignorant person is drawn to it, while the wise rational person avoids it. This is life since the Big Bang occurred until this day, life is one and people are many, life is a great arch and people pass under it in contradictory states, for people are optimistic and pessimistic, rich and poor, sad and happy, lazy and persevering, serious and frivolous, deep-sighted and superficial, and no one can say despite what was and what is and what will be, that injustice will end, that violence will disappear, that evil will be defeated, but everyone must work for the end of injustice and the disappearance of violence and the defeat of evil, and the achievement of peace, and I am not afraid to say my word that I see as correct, and I am not afraid of the consequences of that word, for the word is not an accusation, and I remember here that Socrates was tried on charges of corrupting the minds of Athenian youth, he who made philosophy part of people’s concerns in markets and public places, and philosophers (along with those who speak free and honorable words) are doctors of the soul as described by (Epicurus).

A bouquet of roses for the life we live — or that we must live — with honesty and courage and faith and activity and dignity and honor and effectiveness and freedom, and we know that great visions do not become great reality except through great deeds, a bouquet of roses for life and its noble ideals.
Introduction to my poetry collection (The Neighing of Wounded Horses), whose first edition was published in 2025, by the Publications of the General Union of Writers and Authors in Iraq.