At aga noe en shadow

Crystalized in the present

the past is never far from here

but to live in the past is a kind

of insanity.

We must be like the mad parents

of the children who dove

off cliffs rather than starve to death:

Parents who were amazed

at their children's exuberance.

Except for the young, most of us

are sustained by the past.

Sculpted by time

to be a living embodiment

of the past.

This ranting about courage,

Don't give up the faith; 

Persistence through struggle 

masks this sorry feeling of incompentence

and destructiveness.

If politics is the art of patronage

and the skillful dissemination of power, 

then we are screwed. 

As in the arts, there are brief moments in politics when sanity and light prevail 

but those golden years are quickly replaced by contracting reactions. 

The beauty of an effective political structure 

is its astonishing ability to absorb and neutralize what it is tormented by.