Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.

It’s the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage, relationships, romance fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work.

That he was
old enough to know better.  But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.

Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of him,

the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.

Every morning he was asleep in my bed
like a visitation.
Each afternoon I watched him coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind him and the huge sky
on the other side of that.

Listened to him
while we ate lunch.

How can they say
the marriage, relationship, romance failed?

Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.

I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere.

If babies are not starving someplace, they are starving somewhere else.

With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not be made so fine.

The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well.

The poor women at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness in their future,

smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick.

There is laughter every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.

We must risk delight.

We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment.

We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world.

To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.

If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.

We must admit there will be music despite everything.

We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island:

the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.

To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

Omistettu ystävälleni, jonka huolehtiva ja vahva isä menehtyi toissa päivänä meidän ollessa toisen puolen maailmaa -sekä toiselle ystävälleni, jonka 7 -vuotias kummityttö ei voittanut taistelua pitkää ja vakavaa sairautta vastaan, mutta oli vielä päivää ennen poismenoaan iloisena suunnittelemassa lähtöään ensimmäiselle kouluvuodelle.