Bokelskere.no

The sole purpose of all the cruel things that happen is to kill off miserable, outward-directed desires which, whether they be pride or hunger, joy or pity, only pull us away from the fire that each one of us has the potential to start within him.

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.

All things uncomely and broken, all things worn and old,
The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart,
The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould,
Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.
The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told;
I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart,
With the earth and the sky and the water, remade, like a casket of gold
For my dreams of your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.

When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
And bending down beside the glowing bars
Murmus, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease;
For Summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river-sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.[

The Prison
In 1984, sent by a human rights organization, Luis Nino visited the prison yards of Lurigancho Penitentiary in Lima.
Luis plunged into a lonely sea of half-naked, ragged prisoners and barely managed to elbow his way through.
Afterward, he asked to speak with the warden. The warden wasn't in. The chief of medical services received him.
Luis said some of the prisoners were dying, spitting up blood, and many more were burning with fever and covered in sores. And he hadn't seen a single doctor.
The chief explained, "We doctors only come in when the nurses call us."
"So why don't they call you?"
"We don't have the budget for nurses."

Mother's Day
In the mail I receive a brochure promoting a special offer for that special day. The finest gifts for the self-sacrificing woman who gave you life. "Sleep well at night," the brochure promises, and for a reasonable price it suggests remote control alarms, handheld sirens, electronic high-tech keys, impenetrable window guards, security cameras, triple-lens infrared sensors, and magnetic trips for doors and gates.

The Book
Reina Reyes wanted Felisberto Hernandez to be free to devote himself to writing his wonderful stories and playing the piano. Writing earned him few readers and not a cent, and music was no money-maker either. Felisberto traveled deep into Uruguay and along the Argentina coast giving concerts, and he always had to leave his hotel by the window.
Reina was a teacher, she worked hard to make a living. In all the years he lived with her, Felisberto never heard her speak of money.
The first of every month, Reina gave him a book by one of the novelists or poets he liked. The book contained the freedom that delivered him from the hell of office work or the torment of other employment that steals hours and squanders life.
Every few pages, he would find a bill, ironed flat.

"My dad says automobiles are nothing but a fad. Cost too much to run. In five years, he says, they'll disappear."

Like most of the failures, he had learned the art of doing nothing at all.

Manpower.
Mohammed Ashraf doesn't go to school.
From sun-up till moonrise, he measures, cuts, shapes, punctures, and sews soccer balls, which then go rolling out from Pakistani village of Umar Kot toward the stadiums of the world.
Mohammed is eleven. He has been at this since he was five.
If he knew how to read, and could read English, he would understand the label he sticks on each of his products: "This ball was not made by children."

Sun.
Somewhere in Pennsylvania, Anne Merak works as an assistant to the sun. She's been in that line of work for as long she can recall. At the end of every night, Anne raises her arms and pushes the sun up into the sky. Lowering her arms at day's end she puts the sun down to bed on the horizon.
She was very small when she started this job, and she's never missed a shift.
Half a century ago, she was declared insane. Since then Anne has gone through several institutions, been treated by numerous psychiatrits, and swallowed innumerable pills.
They never managed to cure her.
Thank heavens.