After retiring from a career in healthcare and becoming “a rather late in life poet,” Charles R. Castle developed a fascination with aphorisms during the pandemic, a fascination fueled by W.S. Merwin’s translations in Asian Figures and his Voices of Antonio Porchia (see The World in a Phrase, pp 217-220). Charles included about 100 of his aphorisms as the final chapter of his poetry collection, On the Beach of Borrowed Time. “I’ve found my aphorisms to be an effective change of pace to add to a poetry reading,” Charles says. “The shorter book has also been a way for me to make a political response to current events. I sell or give them away at marches and street protests. We are living in historically interesting times. If nothing else, my great grandchildren will know I made some small effort to express my opposition to the insanity we are witnessing and perhaps I will encourage them to do the same in the future. Why else do we write?” Here is a selection of Charles’s “Aphorisms for an Absurd World”…

You can’t write the book of your life standing in the margins

The straw that broke the camel’s back was carried on the wind

The most precious gifts are rarely wrapped

Old ideas may kill us with new weapons

Judge us by how we treat the weak

not by how we arm the strong

What doesn’t kill you just needs more time

An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth

costs and arm and a leg

Less road rage on the road less traveled