Quotations
Abraham Lincoln
1809-1865 American

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.
—Abraham Lincoln

Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention.
—Abraham Lincoln, correspondence

Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
—Abraham Lincoln

When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That is my religion.
—Abraham Lincoln (attributed)

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
—Abraham Lincoln

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.
—Abraham Lincoln

“Suicide’s Note”
Langston Hughes
1902-1967 American

The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.

Quotations from *Cup of Gold*, 1 of 11
John Steinbeck
1902-1968 American

Often he wearily considered his existence, ringed around with little defeats which mocked it as street children torment a cripple. It was strange to Old Robert that he, who knew so much more than his neighbors, who had pondered so endlessly, should be not even a good farmer. Sometimes he imagined he understood too many things ever to do anything well.
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

He lay propped on one elbow and stared past the fire into his thoughts. The long gray afternoon, piercing to this mysterious night, had called up strong yearnings in him, the seeds of which were planted months before. It was a desire for a thing he could not name.
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

Young Henry was conscious, this night, that he had lived on for fifteen tedious years without accomplishing any single thing of importance.
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

“But, Robert, there’s something gone out of me like a little winking light. I used to lie on the decks of ships at night and think and think how I’d talk and boast when only I came home again—but it’s more like a child, I am, come home to cry. Can you understand that, Robert? Can you understand that at all?”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

Six-Word Story
Edward Albee
1928- American

Poison; meditation; skiing; ants—nothing worked.

“Vietnam”
Wislawa Szymborska
1923- Polish
translated by Magnus J. Krynski and Robert A. Maguire

Woman, what's your name? -- I don't know.
When were you born, where do you come from? -- I don't know.
Why did you dig a hole in the ground? -- I don't know.
How long have you been hiding here? -- I don't know.
Why did you bite the hand of friendship? -- I don't know.
Don't you know we will do you no harm? -- I don't know.
Whose side are you on? -- I don't know.
There's a war on, you must choose. -- I don't know.
Does your village still exist? -- I don't know.
Are these your children? -- Yes.

Quotations from *Cup of Gold*, 2 of 11
John Steinbeck
1902-1968 American

But Robert answered her impatiently.

“To you he is only a little boy who must be made to say his prayers of nights and to wear a coat into the fields. You have not felt the polished steel of him as I have. Yes, to you that quick, hard set of his chin is only the passing stubbornness of a headstrong child. But I do know; and I say to you, without pleasure, that this son of ours will be a great man, because—well—because he is not very intelligent. He can see only one desire at a time. I said he tested his dreams; he will murder every dream with the implacable arrows of his will. This boy will win to every goal of his aiming; for he can realize no thought, no reason, but his own. And I am sorry for his coming greatness because of a thing Merlin once spoke of. You must look at the granite jaws of him, Mother, and the trick he has of making his cheek muscles stand out with clenching them.”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

There were outland forces, nameless foreign ghosts, calling to him and beckoning from across the mysterious sea.

There was no desire in him for a state or condition, no picture in his mind of the thing to be when he had followed his longing; but only a burning and a will overpowering to journey outward and outward after the earliest risen star.
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

Henry said, “I have lost no love, sir, but my dream is over the sea that I do not know. I know Cambria.”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

Merlin searched the boy’s face closely. Sadly he looked up at his harps. “I think I understand,” he said softly. “You are a little boy. You want the moon to drink from as a golden cup; and so, it is very likely that you will become a great man—if only you remain a little child. All the world’s great have been little boys who wanted the moon; running and climbing, they sometimes caught a firefly. But if one grow to a man’s mind, that mind must see that it cannot have the moon and would not want it if it could—and so, it catches no fireflies.”

“But did you never want the moon?” asked Henry in a voice hushed with the room’s quiet.

“I wanted it. Above all desires I wanted it. I reached for it and then—then I grew to be a man, and a failure. But there is this gift for the failure; folk know he has failed, and they are sorry and kindly and gentle. He has the whole world with him; a bridge of contact with his own people; the cloth of mediocrity. But he who shields a firefly in his hands, caught in reaching for the moon, is doubly alone; he only can realize his true failure, can realize his meanness and fears and evasions.

“You will come to your greatness, and it may be in time you will be alone in your greatness and no friend anywhere; only those who hold you in respect or fear or awe. I am sorry for you, boy with the straight, clear eyes which look upward longingly. I am sorry for you, and—Mother Heaven! how I envy you.”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

Six-Word Story
Shamash A.

This is all there is. Enjoy.

“Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town”
Eddie Vedder
1964- American

I seem to recognize your face
Haunting, familiar yet
I can’t seem to place it
Cannot find the candle of thought
To light your name
Lifetimes are catching up with me
All these changes taking place
I wish I’d seen the place
But no one’s ever taken me there

Hearts and thoughts, they fade
Fade away

I swear I recognize your breath
Memories, like fingerprints
Are slowly raising
Me you wouldn’t recall
For I’m not my former
It’s hard when you’re stuck up on a shelf
I change by not changing at all
Small town predicts my fate
Perhaps that what no one wants to see
I just want to scream, “Hello”
My god, it’s been so long
Never dreamed you'd return
But now here you are
And here I am
Hearts and thoughts, they fade away

Hearts and thoughts, they fade
Fade away

Quotations from *Cup of Gold*, 3 of 11
John Steinbeck
1902-1968 American

He had crept from the house in the false dawn, and started briskly walking on the road to Cardiff. There was a frozen, frightened thing in his heart, and a wondering whether he wanted to go at all. To his mind the fear had argued that if he waited to say good-by he would not be able to leave the stone house, not even for the Indies.
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

He passed through villages whose names were unknown to him; friendly little clusters of rude huts, and the people staring at him as at a stranger. It was a joyous thing to young Henry. Always he had stared at others who were strangers, dreaming their destinations and the delicious mystery that sent them forth. The name of Stranger made them grand beings with mighty purposes. And now he was a stranger to be thought about and stared at with a certain reverence. He wanted to shout, “I’m on my way to the Indies,” to widen their dull eyes for them and raise their respect. Silly, spineless creatures, he thought them, with no dream and no will to leave their sodden, dumpy huts.
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

They kneaded the soil in the fields with their fingers, and as their years of servitude crawled on their eyes deadened, their shoulders slumped, and a tired, dull imbecility stretched cloying webs in their brain.
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

When these men were loosed from their slavery, they wandered listlessly about for a time, and watched the others go to work with something of longing. Then, after a little, they either signed new papers of indenture, or went marauding like tigers from a broken cage.
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

Six-Word Story
Ginger Hamilton Caudill

Frigid, cold, cool, tepid, warm, hot.

“I Ain't Ever Satisfied”
Steve Earle
1955- American

I was born by the railroad track
The train whistle wailed and I wailed right back
Papa left mama when I was quite young
He said, "Now one of these days, you're gonna follow me, son"

I ain't ever satisfied

Now I had me a woman, she was my world
But I ran off with a back street girl
Now my back street woman could not be true
She left me standing on the boulevard, thinking about you

I ain't ever satisfied

I got an empty feeling deep inside
I'm going over to the other side

Last night I dreamed I made it to the promised land
I was standing at the gate and I had the key in my hand
Saint Peter said, "Come in, boy, you're finally home"
I said, "No thank you, Pete, I'll just be moving along"

I ain't ever satisfied

Quotations from *Cup of Gold*, 4 of 11
John Steinbeck
1902-1968 American

Henry had learned many things in dealing with the slaves. He knew that he must never let them see what he was thinking, for then, in some ineffable way, they had a hold on him which would be difficult to shake off. He must be cold and distant and insulting to those below him. With few exceptions, they would take insult as the sign of his superiority. Men always believed him what he seemed to be, and he could seem to be almost anything.

If one were brilliantly dressed, all men presumed him rich and powerful, and treated him accordingly. When he said things as though he meant them, nearly all acted as though he meant them. And, most important of his lessons—if he were perfectly honest and gave a strict accounting in nine consecutive dealings, then the tenth time he might steal as much as he wished, and no one would dream of suspecting him, so only he had brought the nine times forcibly enough to the attention of all men.

A growing pile of golden coins in a box under his bed gave ample proof of the validity of this last lesson. And he followed all his teachings. He never gave any man the least hold on him, nor insight into his motives and means and abilities and shortcomings. Since most men did not believe in themselves, they could not believe in one they understood to be like themselves.
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

He gazed about him and knew that he should be satisfied, but his eyes had never lost the trick of looking out beyond distance and over the edge of the present. A little hectoring wish ran through his waking and dreaming like a thin red line. He must get back to the sea and ships. The sea was his mother and his mistress, and the goddess who might command and find him ready and alert for service.
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

“I loved her with that love a man may exercise but once.”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

“But—do you love Paulette?”

He leaped up and glared at her.

“You? Love you? Why, you are just a little animal! a pretty little golden animal, for sure, but a form of flesh—no more. May one worship a god merely because he is big, or cherish a land which has no virtue save its breadth, or love a woman whose whole realm is her flesh? Ah, Paulette! you have no soul at all! Elizabeth had a white winged soul. I love you—yes—with what you have to be loved—the body. But Elizabeth—I loved Elizabeth with my soul.”

Paulette was puzzled.

“What is this soul?” she asked. “And how may I get one if I have not one already? And where is this soul of yours that I have never seen it or heard it at all? And if they cannot be seen, or heard, or touched, how do you know she had this soul?”

“Hush!” he cried furiously. “Hush! or I box your mouth and have you whipped on the cross. You speak of things beyond you. What can you know of love that lies without your fleshly juggling?”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

Six-Word Story
anonymous
2005

Pound dog. Home dog. Pound dog.

“This Is A Photograph Of Me”
Margaret Atwood
1939- Canadian

It was taken some time ago.
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;

then, as you scan
it, you see in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.

In the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.

(The photograph was taken
the day after I drowned.

I am in the lake, in the center
of the picture, just under the surface.

It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion

but if you look long enough,
eventually
you will be able to see me.)

Quotations from *Cup of Gold*, 5 of 11
John Steinbeck
1902-1968 American

There was respect in his eyes, surely, but no fear, no jealousy, and no suspicion.
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

“Heard of her!” he said softly. “Sir, I have dreamed of her and called to her in my sleep. Who has not? Who in all this quarter of the world has not heard of her, and yet who knows any single thing about her? It is a strange thing, the magic of this woman’s name. La Santa Rosa! La Santa Rosa! It conjures up desire in the heart of every man—not active, possible desire, but the ‘if I were handsome, if I were a prince’ kind of desire. The young men make wild plans; some to go disguised to Panama, others to blow it up with quantities of powder. They daydream of carrying the Red Saint off with them. Sir, I have heard a seaman all rotten with disease whispering to himself in the night, ‘If this thing were not on me, I would go adventuring for La Santa Rosa.’”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

And again they sat silently, drinking the rich wine.

“But there is much suffering bound up in women,” Henry Morgan began, as though he had just finished speaking. “They seem to carry pain about with them in a leaking package. You have loved often, they say, Coeur de Gris. Have you not felt the pain they carry?”

“No, sir, I do not think I have. Surely I have been assailed by regrets and little sorrows—everyone has; but mostly I have found only pleasure among women.”

“Ah, you are lucky,” the captain said. “You are filled with luck not to have known the pain. My own life was poisoned by love. This life I lead was forced on me by lost love.”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

“Here is an old man, sir. We are sure he has riches, but he has hidden them away and we can never find any.”

“Then put his feet in the fire!—why, he is a brazen fool! Break his arms!— He will not tell? Put the whip-cord about his temples!— Oh, kill him! kill him and stop his screaming— Perhaps he had no money—”

(There is a woman in Panama—)

“Have you scratched out every grain of gold? Place the city at ransom! We must have riches after pain.”

A fleet of Spanish ships came sailing to the rescue.

“A Spanish squadron coming? We will fight them! No, no; we shall run from them if we can get away. Our hulls lag in the water with their weight of gold. Kill the prisoners!”

(—she is lovely as the sun.)
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

“The Jean-Paul Sartre Cookbook”
Marty Smith
American

We have recently been lucky enough to discover several previously lost diaries of French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre stuck in between the cushions of our office sofa. These diaries reveal a young Sartre obsessed not with the void, but with food. Aparently Sartre, before discovering philosophy, had hoped to write "a cookbook that will put to rest all notions of flavor forever." The diaries are excerpted here for your perusal.

October 3

Spoke with Camus today about my cookbook. Though he has never actually eaten, he gave me much encouragement. I rushed home immediately to begin work. How excited I am! I have begun my formula for a Denver omelet.

October 4

Still working on the omelet. There have been stumbling blocks. I keep creating omelets one after another, like soldiers marching into the sea, but each one seems empty, hollow, like stone. I want to create an omelet that expresses the meaninglessness of existence, and instead they taste like cheese. I look at them on the plate, but they do not look back. Tried eating them with the lights off. It did not help. Malraux suggested paprika.

October 6

I have realized that the traditional omelet form (eggs and cheese) is bourgeois. Today I tried making one out of a cigarette, some coffee, and four tiny stones. I fed it to Malraux, who puked. I am encouraged, but my journey is still long.

October 7

Today I again modified my omelet recipe. While my previous attempts had expressed my own bitterness, they communicated only illness to the eater. In an attempt to reach the bourgeoisie, I taped two fried eggs over my eyes and walked the streets of Paris for an hour. I ran into Camus at the Select. He called me a "pathetic dork" and told me to "go home and wash my face." Angered, I poured a bowl of bouillabaisse into his lap. He became enraged, and, seizing a straw wrapped in paper, tore off one end of the wrapper and blew through the straw, propelleing the wrapper into my eye. "Ow! You dick!" I cried. I leaped up, cursing and holding my eye, and fled.

October 10

I find myself trying ever more radical interpretations of traditional dishes, in an effort to somehow express the void I feel so acutely. Today I tried this recipe:

Tuna Casserole

Ingredients: 1 large casserole dish

Place the casserole dish in a cold oven. Place a chair facing the oven and sit in it forever. Think about how hungry you are. When night falls, do not turn on the light.

While a void is expressed in this recipe, I am struck by its inapplicability to the bourgeois lifestyle. How can the eater recognize that the food denied him is a tuna casserole and not some other dish? I am becoming more and more frustated.

October 12

My eye has become inflamed. I hate Camus.

October 25

I have been forced to abandon the project of producing an entire cookbook. Rather, I now seek a single recipe which will, by itself, embody the plight of man in a world ruled by an unfeeling God, as well as providing the eater with at least one ingredient from each of the four basic food groups. To this end, I purchased six hundred pounds of foodstuffs from the corner grocery and locked myself in the kitchen, refusing to admit anyone. After several weeks of work, I produced a recipe calling for two eggs, half a cup of flour, four tons of beef, and a leek. While this is a start, I am afraid I still have much work ahead.

November 15

I feel that I may be very close to a great breakthrough. I had been creating meal after meal, but none seemed to express the futility of existence any better than would ordering a pizza. I left the house this morning in a most depressed state, and wandered aimlessly through the streets. Suddenly, it was as if the heavens had opened. My brain was electrified with an influx of new ideas. "Juice, toast, milk..." I muttered aloud. I realized with a start that I was one ingredient away from creating the nutritious breakfast. Loathsome, true, but filled with existential authenticity. I rushed home to begin work anew.

November 18

Today I tried yet another variation: Juice, toast, milk and Chee-tos. Again, a dismal failure. I have tried everything. Juice, toast, milk and whiskey, juice, toast, milk and chicken fat, juice, toast, milk and someone else's spit. Nothing helps. I am in agony. Juice, toast, milk, they race about my fevered brain like fire, like an unholy trinity of cruel denial. And the fourth ingredient! What could it be? It eludes me like the lost chord, the Holy Grail. I must see the completion of my task, but I have no more money to spend on food. Perhaps man is not meant to know.

November 21

Camus came into the restaurant today. He did not know I was in the kitchen, and before I sent out his meal I loogied in his soup. Sic semper tyrannis.

November 23

Ran into some opposition at the restaurant. Some of the patrons complained that my breakfast special (a page out of Remembrance of Things Past and a blowtorch with which to set it on fire) did not satisfy their hunger. As if their hunger was of any consequence! "But we're starving," they say. So what? They're going to die eventually anyway. They make me want to puke. I have quit the job. It is stupid for Jean-Paul Sartre to sling hash. I have enough money to continue my work for a little while.

November 24

Last night I had a dream. In it, I am standing, alone, on a beach. A great storm is raging all about me. It begins to rain. Night falls. I am struck by how small and insignificant I am, how the entire race of Man is but a speck in the eye of God, and I am but a speck of humanity. Suddenly, a red Cadillac convertible pulls up beside me. In it are these two beautiful girls named Jojo and Wendy. I get in and the take me to their mansion in Hollywood and give me a pound of cocaine and make mad, passionate love to me for the rest of my life.

November 26

Today I made a Black Forest cake out of five pounds of cherries and a live beaver, challenging the very definition of the word "cake." I was very pleased. Malraux said he admired it greatly, but could not stay for dessert. Still, I feel that this may be my most profound achievement yet, and have resolved to enter it in the Betty Crocker Bake-Off.

November 30

Today was the day of the Bake-Off. Alas, things did not go as I had hoped. During the judging, the beaver became agitated and bit Betty Crocker on the wrist. The beaver's powerful jaws are capable of felling blue spruce in less than ten minutes and proved, needless to say, more than a match for the tender limbs of America's favorite homemaker. I only got third place. Moreover, I am now the subject of a rather nasty lawsuit.

December 1

I have been gaining twenty-five pounds a week for two months, and I am now experiencing light tides. It is stupid to be so fat. My pain and ultimate solitude are still as authentic as they were when I was thin, but seem to impress girls far less. From now on, I will live on cigarettes and black coffee.

Quotations from *Cup of Gold*, 6 of 11
John Steinbeck
1902-1968 American

“Now the men are straining to get back that they may spend their money. If it were possible they would be pushing the ships to hurry them. What will you do with your money, Coeur de Gris?”

“Why, I shall send half to my mother. The remaining sum I shall divide in two. Part I shall put away, and on the other I expect to be drunk for a few days, or perhaps a week. It is good to be drunk after fighting.”

“Drunkenness has never been a pleasure to me,” the captain said. “It makes me very sad. But I have a new venture turning in my brain. Coeur de Gris, what is the richest city of the western world? What place has been immune from the slightest gesture of the Brotherhood? Where might we all make millions?”

“But, sir, you do not think— Surely you cannot consider it possible to take—”

“I will take Panama—even the Cup of Gold.”

“How may you do this thing? The city is strongly guarded with walls and troops, and the way across the isthmus is nigh impossible but for the burro trail. How will you do this thing?”

“I must take Panama. I must capture the Cup of Gold.” The captain’s jaw set fiercely.

Now Coeur de Gris was smiling quietly.
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

“I must have an army this time, my friend, and even then we may all die. Perhaps that is the chief joy of life—to risk it.”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

Young Coeur de Gris stood musing by the mast.

“Our captain, our cold captain, has been bitten by this great, nebulous rumoring. How strange this pattern is! It is as though the Red Saint had been stolen from my arms. My dream is violated. I wonder, when they know, if every man will carry this feeling of a bitter loss—will hate the captain for stealing his desire.”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

“Ennui”
Sylvia Plath
1932-1963 American

Tea leaves thwart those who court catastrophe,
designing futures where nothing will occur:
cross the gypsy's palm and yawning she
will still predict no perils left to conquer.
Jeopardy is jejune now: naïve knight
finds ogres out-of-date and dragons unheard
of, while blasé princesses indict
tilts at terror as downright absurd.

The beast in Jamesian grove will never jump,
compelling hero's dull career to crisis;
and when insouciant angels play God's trump,
while bored arena crowds for once look eager,
hoping toward havoc, neither pleas nor prizes
shall coax from doom's blank door lady or tiger.

“Your toothpaste, floss and deodorant are aligned”
Michael McGeachie (Mike McGeachie)
1976- American

Remember in 2003, there was this big cosmological confluence of planets or stars or something? Some kind of event where the nearby planets all lined up from our point of view, on Earth, and then starting at 7pm or so you could see this big bright star in the sky, sorta under the moon. I think it lasted about a week. And that's pretty neat I suppose, and only occurs once every billion years or something, and that would be impressive, if, of course, I'd ever looked at the sky before to know what I was or wasn't seeing. But maybe that's not my fault. If there wasn't all this pesky infrastructure and architecture and street lights obscuring the sky, maybe I'd have seen it once before. I can imagine cavemen, from a 70s B-movie, having a much less encumbered view of the night sky, and perhaps learning to recognize certain patterns of lights up there, that came out every night. To them, this sort of thing must have been magnificent.

Maybe I can relate to what that must have been like, by comparison with a similar experience I had. Early last week, you see, I ran out of toothpaste, dental floss, and deodorant all on the same day. And at first I didn't realize what I was witnessing, because I was pretty confident that remembering I was out of everything would be easier than remembering which thing it was I was out of, when next I was shopping, and this lightened my mood and distracted me somewhat. But then I thought about the cycles I was witnessing: I must run out of toothpaste every 12-14 weeks, and dental floss sooner, and similarly deodorant must have its own harmonic cycle, but somehow, on this particular night, they had all aligned. The odds against it must have been astronomical. But yet the patterns of use and refilling of tubes and containers that greet me each night, composing the pastel background in the portrait of my quotidian routine, had shown me their inner harmony. Each separate immutable cycle had, somehow, mystically, come together in the Grand Cosmic Dance of the Toiletries. And this, I suspected, would have little impact on the stargazing Cavepeople I imagined. But who cares what they think anyway? Cause see what I think of your stars? Not much, that's for sure. Yeah. So we're even now, Cavepeople.

Quotations from *Cup of Gold*, 7 of 11
John Steinbeck
1902-1968 American

It is amazing how this road-mender has his whole life curled like a kitten around four days in London.
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

“Why, to speak truthfully, Robert, I have taken it in my mind several times—but always there were too many things to think about. I could not take the time to die. If I did, I might not be able to think ever again.

“For up here, Robert, that furtive hope the valley men call faith becomes a questionable thing. Oh, without doubt, if there were a great many about me, and they all intoning endlessly the chant, ‘There is a wise, kind God; surely we shall go on living after death,’ then I might be preparing for the coming life. But here, alone, halfway up the sky, I am afraid that death would interrupt my musing. The mountains are a kind of poultice for a man’s abstract pain. Among them he laughs—oh, far more often than he cries.”

“You know,” said Robert, “my mother, the old Gwenliana, made a last, curious prophecy before she died. ‘This night the world ends,’ she said, ‘and there will be no more earth to walk upon.’”

“Robert, I think she spoke truth. I think her dying words were truth, whatever may have been her other auguries. This gnawing thought comes visiting, sometimes, and because of it I am afraid to die—horribly afraid. If by my living I give life to you, and fresh existence to the fields and trees and all the long green world, it would be an unutterable deed to wipe them all out like a chalk drawing. I must not—yet awhile.”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

“News of him comes out of the south on a light, inaccurate wind. Rumor has wings like bats. It is said that he rules a wild race of pirates; that he has captured towns and pillaged cities. The English are elated, and call him a hero and a patriotic man—and so do I, sometimes. But I fear if I were a Spaniard, he would be only a successful robber.”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

“So,” Merlin mused, “he has come to be the great man he thought he wanted to be. If this is true, then he is not a man. He is still a little boy and wants the moon. I suppose he is rather unhappy about it. Those who say children are happy, forget their childhood. I wonder how long he can stave off manhood.”
—John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

“Song on the End of the World”
Czeslaw Milosz
1911-2004 Polish
translated by Anthony Milosz

On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels' trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he's much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
No other end of the world will there be,
No other end of the world will there be.