With tired mouth I approached the question of mercy.
No, said the woman in pallid robes, no said the man
with a computer stare in the train station, no said
the laughing maniac who had just been freed from the
prison of his sorrow. And though I understand,
people think of me as a fool, people in their half-knowledges
emblazoned in their minds like half burnt quilts are without
the eyes of the wisest child.

With travels before and behind, all of us move in the rectitude of
experience, and it should be said that the horrible thoughtless acts
of children scarcely change in the horrible thoughtless acts of adults.
The beauties, it is true, are few sometimes
like a self-conscious awkward woman who donates baked goods to the blind
at church on sundays, or the tired old man who writes to dying schoolchildren
in hospitals in order to tell them kindly of great stories of the brave sick
that have gone untold in this culture of soul-murderers and thieves of the spirit.