My Poetry Corner January 2017 features a passage from Warrior of the Light: A Manual by Brazilian lyricist and novelist, Paulo Coelho, born in 1947 in Rio de Janeiro, Southeast Brazil. While Coelho’s background as a songwriter endows his prose with an engaging lyricism, the featured work is not a poem.

Warrior of the Light: A Manual, published in 1997, is written in the form of short philosophical passages. Drawing on his own life experiences and ancient Eastern wisdom, Coelho invites each one of us to become a Warrior of the Light: someone capable of understanding the miracle of life, of fighting to the last for something he believes in.

This is not a normal year. We must prepare ourselves to enter the battlefield to defend our civil and human rights under threat.

Every Warrior of the light has felt afraid of going into battle.
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