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| 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. |
