if you consider yourself lucky,
don't,
for whatever you've gained you've gained by
doing something a little differently or
with a little more magic than
somebody else.

...

I could go on
but I feel by now
I've made the point,
and as the people come home this evening
from the war
and sit at their tables to eat and
talk, and perhaps later to make
love
(if they are not too tired)
don't tell them that all life is a matter of luck---
good and bad.

they know it's a matter of
doing or dying.
Hitler, Ty Cobb, the man at the vegetable stand---
they knew it and they know it.

save the bad luck fairy tale for small
children. they'll learn the real story
soon enough.

We have learned that love is never civilized.

"The work I have so far done is nothing or not much - as good as nothing. I will do better, Lisabeta - this is a promise. As I write, the sea whispers to me and I close my eyes. I am looking into a world unborn and formless, that needs to be ordered and shaped; I see into a whirl of shadows of human figures who beckon to me to weave spells to redeem them: tragic and laughable figures and some that are both together - and to these I am drawn. But my deepest and secretest love belongs to the blond and blue-eyed, the fair and living, the happy, lovely, and commonplace.

"Do not chide this love, Lisabeta; it is good and fruitful. There is longing in it, and a gentle envy; a touch of contempt and no little innocent bliss."