Lord have mercy.

Picture:  Ray Morimura

The world's a wonderful place--
If you don't mind laughing at your mistakes
If you don't mind feeling like you've lost your brakes
And if you don't mind
A touch of hell
Every now and then--
--Harrod & Funck



How long, O LORD? wilt thou hide thyself for ever? shall thy wrath burn like fire?
Remember how short my time is: wherefore hast thou made all men in vain?
--Psalm 89: 46-47






Certainly praise; let song mount again and again
For life as it blossoms out in a jar or a face,
For vegetal patience, for animal courage and grace:
Some have been happy; some, even, were great men.

But hear the morning's injured weeping and know why:
Ramparts and souls have fallen; the will of the unjust
Has never lacked an engine; still all princes must
Employ the fairly-noble unifying lie.

History opposes its grief to our bouyant song,
To our hope its warning.  One star has warmed to birth
One puzzled species that has yet to prove its worth:

The quick new West is false, and prodigious but wrong
The flower-like Hundred Families who for so long
In the Eighteen Provinces have modified the earth.


--W. H. Auden, "Sonnets from China" XI