March 1898What a strange dream I had last night! I wandered in the warm streets of a port, in the low quarter of some Barcelona or Marseille. The streets were noisome, with their freshly-heaped piles of ordure outside the doors, in the blue shadows of their high roofs. They all led down towards the sea. The gold-spangled sea, seeming as if it had been polished by the sun, could be seen at the end of each thoroughfare, bristling with yard-arms and luminous masts. The implacable blue of the sky shone brilliantly overhead as I wandered through the long, cool and sombre corridors in the emptiness of a deserted district: a quarter which might almost have been dead, abruptly abandoned by seamen and foreigners. I was alone, subjected to the stares of prostitutes seated at their windows or in the doorways, whose eyes seemed to ransack my very soul.They did not speak to me. Leaning on the sides of tall bay-windows or huddled in doorways, they were silent. Their breasts and arms were bare, bizarrely made up in pink, their eyebrows were darkened, they wore their hair in corkscrew-curls, decorated with paper flowers and metal birds. And they were all exactly alike!They might have been huge marionettes, or tall mannequin dolls left behind in panic - for I divined that some plague, some frightful epidemic brought from the Orient by sailors, had swept through the town and emptied it of its inhabitants. I was alone with these simulacra of love, abandoned by the men on the doorsteps of the brothels.I had already been wandering for hours without being able to find a way out of that miserable quarter, obsessed by the fixed and varnished eyes of all those automata, when I was seized by the sudden thought that all these girls were dead, plague-stricken and putrefied by cholera where they stood, in the solitude, beneath their carmine plaster masks... and my entrails were liquefied by cold. In spite of that harrowing chill, I was drawn closer to a motionless girl. I saw that she was indeed wearing a mask... and the girl in the next doorway was also masked... and all of them were horribly alike under their identical crude colouring...I was alone with the masks, with the masked corpses, worse than the masks... when, all of a sudden, I perceived that beneath the false faces of plaster and cardboard, the eyes of these dead women were alive.Their vitreous eyes were looking at me...I woke up with a cry, for in that moment I had recognised all the women. They all had the eyes of Kranile and Willie, of Willie the mime and Kranile the dancer. Every one of the dead women had Kranile's left eye and Willie's right eye... so that every one of them appeared to be squinting.Am I to be haunted by masks now?

إن كلا منا يعرف في بداية حياته ما هي أسطورته الذاتية التي ينبغي أن يحققها. ولكن قوى غامضة تحاول أن تصرفك عن تحقيق تلك الأسطورة. تضع أمامك كل أنواع العقبات. ولكنك عندما تريد شيئا بحق فإن رغبتك الحقيقية تصبح جزءا من روح العالم الذي أنت جزءا منه. وروح العالم تتغذى من سعادة البشر. إلا أنها أيضا تتغذى من الشقاء والحسد والغيرة حين ينكص الإنسان عن إنجاز أسطورته. ويتراجع عنها. إن تحقيق الذات هو الالتزام الوحيد للإنسان على الأرض. حين يسعى إليه يندرج هو أيضا في تلك الروح الشاملة. ويتآمر العالم كله معه لكي يحقق له رغبته. ما دام قد أوتي الشجاعة لقهر القوى الغامضة التي تريد أن تشل قدرته على الفعل.

For JennAt 12 years old I started bleeding with the moonand beating up boys who dreamed of becoming astronauts.I fought with my knuckles white as stars,and left bruises the shape of Salem.There are things we know by heart,and things we don't. At 13 my friend Jen tried to teach me how to blow rings of smoke.I'd watch the nicotine rising from her lips like halos,but I could never make dying beautiful.The sky didn't fill with colors the night I convinced myselfveins are kite strings you can only cut free.I suppose I love this life,in spite of my clenched fist.I open my palm and my lifelines look like branches from an Aspen tree,and there are songbirds perched on the tips of my fingers,and I wonder if Beethoven held his breaththe first time his fingers touched the keysthe same way a soldier holds his breaththe first time his finger clicks the trigger.We all have different reasons for forgetting to breathe.But my lungs rememberthe day my mother took my hand and placed it on her bellyand told me the symphony beneath was my baby sister's heartbeat.And I knew life would tremblelike the first tear on a prison guard's hardened cheek,like a prayer on a dying man's lips,like a vet holding a full bottle of whisky like an empty gun in a war zone…just take me just take meSometimes the scales themselves weigh far too much,the heaviness of forever balancing blue sky with red blood.We were all born on days when too many people died in terrible ways,but you still have to call it a birthday.You still have to fall for the prettiest girl on the playground at recessand hope she knows you can hit a baseballfurther than any boy in the whole third gradeand I've been running for homethrough the windpipe of a man who singswhile his hands playing washboard with a spoonon a street corner in New Orleanswhere every boarded up window is still painted with the wordsWe're Coming Backlike a promise to the oceanthat we will always keep moving towards the music,the way Basquait slept in a cardboard box to be closer to the rain.Beauty, catch me on your tongue. Thunder, clap us open.The pupils in our eyes were not born to hide beneath their desks.Tonight lay us down to rest in the Arizona desert,then wake us washing the feet of pregnant womenwho climbed across the border with their bellies aimed towards the sun.I know a thousand things louder than a soldier's gun.I know the heartbeat of his mother.Don't cover your ears, Love.Don't cover your ears, Life.There is a boy writing poems in Central Parkand as he writes he movesand his bones become the bars of Mandela's jail cell stretching apart,and there are men playing chess in the December coldwho can't tell if the breath rising from the boardis their opponents or their own,and there's a woman on the stairwell of the subwayswearing she can hear Niagara Falls from her rooftop in Brooklyn,and I'm remembering how Niagara Falls is a city overrunwith strip malls and traffic and vendorsand one incredibly brave river that makes it all worth it. Ya'll, I know this world is far from perfect.I am not the type to mistake a streetlight for the moon.I know our wounds are deep as the Atlantic.But every ocean has a shorelineand every shoreline has a tidethat is constantly returningto wake the songbirds in our hands, to wake the music in our bones,to place one fearless kiss on the mouth of that brave riverthat has to run through the center of our heartsto find its way home.

বোধআলো — অন্ধকারে যাই — মাথার ভিতরেস্বপ্ন নয়, কোন এক বোধ কাজ করে!স্বপ্ন নয় — শান্তি নয় — ভালোবাসা নয়,হৃদয়ের মাঝে এক বোধ জন্ম লয়!আমি তারে পারি না এড়াতেসে আমার হাত রাখে হাতে;সব কাছ তুচ্ছ হয়, পন্ড মনে হয়,সব চিন্তা — প্রার্থনার সকল সময়শূন্য মনে হয়,শূন্য মনে হয়!সহজ লোকের মতো কে চলিতে পারে!কে থামিতে পারে এই আলোয় আঁধারেসহজ লোকের মতো! তাদের মতন ভাষা কথাকে বলিতে পারে আর! — কোন নিশ্চয়তাকে জানিতে পারে আর? — শরীরের স্বাদকে বুঝিতে চায় আর? — প্রাণের আহ্লাদসকল লোকের মতো কে পাবে আবার!সকল লোকের মতো বীজ বুনে আরস্বাদ কই! — ফসলের আকাঙক্ষায় থেকে,শরীরে মাটির গন্ধ মেখে,শরীরে জলের গন্ধ মেখে,উৎসাহে আলোর দিকে চেয়েচাষার মতণ প্রাণ পেয়েকে আর রহিবে জেগে পৃথিবীর পরে?স্বপ্ন নয়, শান্তি নয়,কোন এক বোধ কাজ করেমাথার ভিতরে!

..سوف أكون حالما .الحلم دفاعي عن هشاشتي امام الريح الهائجة .انا ما أحلم به فقط.ساكون نسمة خفيفة نتجت عن يد تربت على كتف متعب.سأكون عاشقا الى الابد وسأبقى خجولا امام حبيبتي دائما.سأشكر الشعراء على ما يقدمونه من نقاء في الحياة .ساكون صديقا دائما للصباح المندى وللغدير الذي يرسم بهديره الناعم قصة الوادي .انا ساكون صديقا حميما للشجر الغزير الملتف على خصر الجبل.سأكون عسلا يسيل من شفاه الازهار و ثلجا فقيرا ينام فوق الاسوار.ساكون نهرا مترقرقا يتغزل بكل شجرة تمنحه ظلها وتلمس يديه .سيكون منزلي من وهج نبيذ طائش فوق الغيوم, بعيدا بعيدا عن التراب انا الحالم. انا المتفهم لوشوشة عصفور صغير في اذني يخبرني اسرار الفجر ويعلمني .ارتشاف الرذاذانا أشكر فناجين القهوة ودواوين الشعراء والاغاني واقدم احترامي لكل وتر في هذه .الارض.انا اشكر الابتسامات والجدائل والعيون على ما تقدمه لي من ايات التجلي والمكوث انا اشكر المدن على جرعات الالفة السريعة .واشكر الشوارع على رونقها البهيج ومصافحتها الناعمة لخطواتي المرحة.انا اشكر الحياة على وجودها بكل ما املك من جرأة سأملأ جيوبي بالمطر وسأغتسل بالزبد وسيكون افطاري وعشائي .قصيدة مغمسة برفيف جناح .هو انتصاري الاخير عليك ايها اليوم المستمر كالبارحة. ايها الغد الذي يعود الى الوراء .ايها الجنون المطبق. ايها البهوت القادم من احداق الهمومحلمي هو قاتلك ايها الخراب العالي, ستنزل من حصنك لتسمع همس الاساور ,لتعرف معنى .اللون في لوحات الاقحوان..ستكون الحياة ما احلم به فقط