The above poem found its way to me the only way poems ever find me, by happenstance. I was looking through a poetry book for another reason when the book fell open on this particular page. Although it is very unlikely that Brecht, an early 20^th Century German socialist playwright, would have been influenced by, or even heard of the Buddha, it is clearly a Buddhist poem. The poem begins with “Everything changes” and, of course, impermanence is one of the three lakshanas, one of the three marks of existence.

“What has happened has happened,” or in other words, we have no choice but to accept the way things are and, quite possibly, it is implied the way things are is not necessarily how we would want them to be.

And then, in a classic illustration of entropy: “the water you once drained into the wine cannot be drained off again”. The universe is moving always, from a state of order to disorder. Nevertheless, despite this, “Everything changes”, is ultimately an encouraging poem. We can start again with our final breath. It is never too late to change, no one is beyond redemption. For anyone, at any time “Beginning Anew” is always possible. And we can start again, take a different direction, because everything changes. It is impermanence that makes the evolution of the self possible.  In the words, of the Buddha, with regards to Awakening, “If I did not know it could be done, I would not ask you to do it.”

Brecht may not have been working in a Buddhist context but this poem points at universal truths, and the hope that is inherent within existence.