I awoke one night in New Orleans,

from a dream in which I wept.

A man stood by a wrought iron gate.

He called to me as I slept.

It’s time to weigh your life. He said.

So tell me what you have wrought.

Are you worthy to enter here

or was your time for naught.

I started to tell of my good deeds,

of money to charity given.

I told of triumphs, of my hard work

and the goals for which I’d striven.

Gently he said, as he raised a hand.

I know of all that you speak.

for these, your days, are written here

that’s not the knowledge I seek.

It’s very simple, he said to me,

two things from the land of the living.

One is the sorrow that you have caused,

the other the joy you are giving.

For tears of sorrow and tears of joy

are as pearls that come from the sea.

A precious part of your hidden self

these tears are important to me.

But how may you judge such unlike things?

These emotions I’ve given my peers.

I balance them on my silver scales

and note the poise of the tears.

He balanced the drops on silver scales.

My tears rushed as I slept.

But I’ll never know; were they tears of woe,

or tears of joy that I wept.

David Garlick, New Orleans, 1990