God Save Us From People Who Mean

All Over India, All Over The World, As The Sun Or The Shadow Of Darkness Moves From East To West, The Call To Prayer Moves With It, And People Kneel Down In A Wave To Pray To God. Five Waves Each Day - One For Each Namaaz - Ripple Across The Globe From Longitude To Longitude. The Component Elements Change Direction, Like Iron Filings Near A Magnet - Towards The House Of God In Mecca.

Behind Every Door On Every Ordinary Street, In Every Hut In Every Ordinary Village In This Middling Planet Of A Trivial Star, Such Riches Are To Be Found. The Strange Journeys We Undertake On Our Earthly Pilgrimage, The Joy And Suffering We Taste Or Confer, The Chance Events That Leave Us Together Or Apart, What A Complex Trace They Leave: So Personal As To Be Almost Incommunicable, So Fugitive As To Be Almost Irrecoverable.

Is It Not Love That Knows How To Make Smooth Things Rough And Rough Things Smooth?

I Don't Pick And Choose Subjects Or Settings; They Pick And Choose Me.

Quietly They Moved Down The Calm And Sacred River That Had Come Down To Earth So That Its Waters Might Flow Over The Ashes Of Those Long Dead, And That Would Continue To Flow Long After The Human Race Had, Through Hatred And Knowledge, Burned Itself Out.