Bokelskere.no

Jeg er ikke redd for Gud, jeg har ingen grunn til det. Men jeg har ei høne eller to å plukke med han.

He stood hat in hand over the unmarked earth. This woman who had worked for his family fifty years. She had cared for his mother as a baby and she had worked for his family long before his mother was born and she had known and cared for the wild Grady boys who were his mother's uncles and who had all died so long ago and he stood holding his hat and he called her his abuela and he said goodbye to her in Spanish and then turned and put on his hat and turned his wet face to the wind and for a moment he held out his hands as if to steady himself or as if to bless the ground there or perhaps as if to slow the world that was rushing away and seemed to care nothing for the old or the young or rich or poor or dark or pale or he or she. Nothing for their struggles, nothing for their names. Nothing for the living or the dead.

They heard somewhere in that tenantless night a bell that tolled and ceased where no bell was and they rode out on the round dais of the earth which alone was dark and no light to it and which carried their figures and bore them up into the swarming stars so that they rode not under but among them and they rode at once jaunty and circumspect, like thieves newly loosed in that dark electric, like young thieves in a glowing orchard, loosely jacketed against the cold and ten thousand worlds for the choosing.

Det skal visstnok være sant at de som ikke kjenner historien er dømt til å gjenta den. Jeg tror ikke kjennskapet til den kan redde oss. Det som går igjen i historien er grådighet og dumskap og blodtørst og dette er noe selv Gud - som vet alt som er å vite - later til å stå maktesløs overfor.

Til slutt ender vi alle med å bli kurert for våre sentimentale tanker. De livet ikke kurerer tar døden seg av. Verden er ganske så ubarmhjertig i sitt valg mellom drøm og virkelighet, selv når vi ikke vil. Mellom ønsket og oppfyllelsen ligger verden og venter.