Crystalized in the presentthe 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.
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