Nothing You Do For Children Is Ever

We Are Great Mysteries. No Matter What We Imagine We May Know, Even For All The Facts We Might Gather, We Don't Know Each Other. Never Do, Probably Never Will. Our Reputations Depend On The Opinions Of The Ill Informed. We All Have Better Moments Than Anybody Ever Knows, And So Do All The Others. We Are, Each One Of Us, Books That Are Read By Critics Who Only Glanced At The Chapter Headings And The Jacket Flap. Each One Of Us Is A Secret, And On That Basis We Ought To Treat Each Other With The Deepest Respect.

Forget What You Learned About Poetry In School. (that It's Complex, Opaque, A Problem To Be Solved In 1500 Words By Tomorrow.) Poetry Is The Last Preserve Of Honest Speech And The Outspoken Heart. It Holds The Cadence Of Common Life. It Has A Passion For Truth And Justice And Liberty; It Is A Buoy To People In Ordinary Trouble: To A Friend Whose Life Has Gone Skidding Into The Meridian, Who Has Been Struck By Bad News, Who Is Frying Eggs And Hash Browns And Has Whiny Child Clinging To His Pant Leg.

We Live A Pleasant Life Shopping At The Food Shoppe . . . Taking The Kids To The Weinery-beanery, . . . And Eating Bran Flakes . .. And Then, With No Warning, We Wake Up One Morning Stricken With Middle Age, Full Of Loneliness, Dumb, In Pain. Our Work Is Useless, Our Vocation Is Lost, And Nobody Cares About Us At All. This Is Not Bearable. In Despair, We Go Do Something Spectacularly Dumb, Like Run Away With Amber The Cocktail Waitress, And Suddenly All The Women In Our Life Look At Us With Unmitigated Disgust.

Majestic Doesn't Appeal To Us. We [americans] Like The Grand Canyon Better With Clarence And Arlene Parked In Front Of It, Smiling.

I Think The Most Un-american Thing You Can Say Is, 'you Can't Say That.'