Grooks by Piet Hein Page A

went underground and Invented the short aphoristic poem, the grook. With its double-edged meanings and its pithy charm, the grook seemed a fine way—possibly the only way—to say the sort of humanistic and democratic things that needed to be said. He was immediately claimed ‘a born classic’, a descendant from the writers of the Old Nordic Havamal poems. He has written over seven thousand of these to date, and has sold half a million copies of his grooks books in Denmark alone, a country with a population of less than 5 million people. Look at this in terms of the English-speaking world and you have a sale that is the equivalent of over 30 million copies.
    According to Swedish and Norwegian reviews he is ‘the most quoted Scandinavian’, a kind of unofficial (the institution doesn’t exist) Scandinavian Poet Laureate, and has often been proposed for the Nobel Prize. When Grooks finally came to be published in America they became immensely popular and were hailed in collected form as being ‘a runaway bestseller’ by the New York Times. One of the many people who reacted with great appreciation to the grooks was Charles Chaplin, with whom Piet Hein developed a close understanding.
    Piet Hein regards himself as ‘a characteristic specialist’ because he feels he applies the same kind of creative imagination to all the types of work he tackles, thus helping to bridge the artificial chasm between the humanities and the sciences.
    He interprets the enormous response to his work not as a tribute to himself so much as a highly encouraging sign that people throughout the world are wide-awake to anything that bridges the gaps in our human universe.
    The Publishers .

ARS BREVIS
    There is
    one art,
    no more,
    no less:
    to do
    all things
    with art-
    lessness.

PROBLEMS
    Problems worthy
    of attack
    prove their worth
    by hitting back.

THE ETERNAL TWINS
    Taking fun
    as simply fun
    and earnestness
    in earnest
    shows how thoroughly
    thou none
    of the two
    discernest.

CONSOLATION GROOK
    Losing one glove
    is certainly painful.
    but nothing
    compared to the pain
    of losing one,
    throwing away the other,
    and finding
    the first one again.

T. T. T.
    Put up in a place
    where it’s easy to see
    the cryptic admonishment
    T. T. T.
    When you feel how depressingly
    slowly you climb,
    it’s well to remember that
    Things Take Time.

OMNISCIENCE
    Know what
    thou knowest not
    is in a sense
    omniscience.

SIMPLY ASSISTING GOD
    I am a humble artist
    moulding my earthly clod,
    adding my labour to nature’s,
    simply assisting God.
    Not that my effort is needed:
    yet somehow, I understand,
    my maker has willed it that I too should have
    unmoulded clay in my hand.

HINT AND SUGGESTION
    Admonitory grook addressed to youth.
    The human spirit sublimates
    the impulses it thwarts;
    a healthy sex life mitigates
    the lust for other sports.

MANKIND
    Men, said the Devil,
    are good to their brothers:
    they don’t want to mend
    their own ways, but each other’s.

NAIVE—
    Naive you are
    if you believe
    life favours those
    who aren’t naive.

THE MIRACLE OF SPRING
    We glibly talk
    of nature’s laws
    but do things have
    a natural cause?
    Black earth turned into
    yellow crocus
    is undiluted
    hocus-pocus.

DREAM INTERPRETATION
    Simplified.
    Everything’s either
    concave or -vex,
    so whatever you dream
    will be something with sex.

PRAYER
    to the sun above the clouds.
    Sun that givest all things birth,
    shine on everything on earth!
    If that’s too much to demand.
    shine at least on this our land.
    If even that’s too much for thee,
    shine at any rate on me.

CIRCUMSCRIPTURE
    As Pastor X steps out of bed
    he slips a neat disguise on:
    that halo round his priestly head
    is really his horizon.

SOCIAL MECHANISM
    When people always
    try to take
    the very smallest
    piece of cake
    how can it also
    always be
    that that’s the one
    that’s left for me?”

A TOAST
    The soul may be a mere pretence,
    the mind makes very little sense.
    So let us value the