Arundhati Roy

To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away.

lovely lovely lovely :)

You'll be free, child, once you have died. From the shackles of language, and measurable time.

HOLD OUT THE ARM AND QUIET THE VOICE

Stokely Carmichael

We should begin with the basic fact that black Americans have two problems: they are poor and they are black. All other problems arise from this two-sided reality: lack of education, the so-called apathy of black men. Any program to end racism must address itself to that double reality.

This is the twenty-seventh time I have been arrested - and I ain't going to jail no more!"

"The only way we gonna stop them white men from whuppin' us is to take over. We been saying freedom for six years and we ain't got nothin'. What we gonna start saying now is Black Power!"

I lit a fire up on the dust-dry mountain top with some sticks that I found as dusk fell. Birds sailed through the evening cool with their usual thoughtless serenity and the crickets started up the usual tuneless song. Gentle breeze set the smoke twirling away into the endless sky.

I wondered why you'd gone, where you'd gone, what that meant. I got about as far as everyone else ever does with those questions.

I never talked much in philosophy class. One day the teacher asked me what I thought the meaning of life was as we packed away, out of the blue. You know it's honest when it's out of the blue. I said to her, "I get the feeling that we are probably all just dicking around". She laughed a lot and said it was a very interesting answer, and that she had been a nihilist at my age. I don't know what a nihilist is, but I don't think she really appreciated the seriousness of the thought.

Night began to fall and the fire burned itself out. Perhaps something of you floated back towards me on the wind, and told me something. Perhaps I listened. I don't know.

Gentle breeze set the smoke twirling away into the endless sky. Illiterate. Timeless.

Slave songs

We raise de wheat, dey gib us de corn;
We bake de bread, dey gib us de crust;
We sif de meal, dey gib us de huss;
We peel de meat, dey gib us de skin;
And dat's de way, dey take us in;
We skim de pot, dey gib us de liquor,
And say dat's good enough for nigger.

Auden

As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
'Love has no ending.

'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,

'I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

'The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.'

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.

'In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.

'In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.

'Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.

'O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.

'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.

'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.

'O look, look in the mirror?
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

'O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.'

It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.