I Carry My Awareness Of Defeat Like

It's In An Inland Sea That The River Of My Life Ended.

I Was A Poet Animated By Philosophy, Not A Philosopher With Poetic Faculties.

We May Know That The Work We Continue To Put Off Doing Will Be Bad. Worse, However, Is The Work We Never Do. A Work That’s Finished Is At Least Finished. It May Be Poor, But It Exists, Like The Miserable Plant In The Lone Flowerpot Of My Neighbour Who’s Crippled. That Plant Is Her Happiness, And Sometimes It’s Even Mine. What I Write, Bad As It Is, May Provide Some Hurt Or Sad Soul A Few Moments Of Distraction From Something Worse. That’s Enough For Me, Or It Isn’t Enough, But It Serves Some Purpose, And So It Is With All Of Life.

I Read And Am Liberated. I Acquire Objectivity. I Cease Being Myself And So Scattered. And What I Read, Instead Of Being Like A Nearly Invisible Suit That Sometimes Oppresses Me, Is The External World’s Tremendous And Remarkable Clarity, The Sun That Sees Everyone, The Moon That Splotches The Still Earth With Shadows, The Wide Expanses That End In The Sea, The Blackly Solid Trees Whose Tops Greenly Wave, The Steady Peace Of Ponds On Farms, The Terraced Slopes With Their Paths Overgrown By Grape-vines.

No Intelligent Idea Can Gain General Acceptance Unless Some Stupidity Is Mixed In With It.