Hunger's Brides by Paul Anderson

Author:Paul Anderson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780307368317
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Published: 2004-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

†Byzantine emperor and lawgiver

†the sane

JUANA INÉS DE LA CRUZ

B. Limosneros, trans.

For an hour, sad thought,

let us pretend

I am happy

though I know I am not:

since they say what afflicts us

has its conceiving in the mind,

to imagine ourselves blest

is to be a bit less wretched.

Oh that my mind this once,

should serve to bring me peace,

that it not always run

counter to my ease.

The whole world holds convictions

of such divergent kinds

that what one deems black,

another proves white.

What entrances some

enrages others;

and what this one finds irksome

adds to that one’s comfort.

He who is sorrowing says

the happy man is heartless;

and he who is joyful smiles,

to see the sufferer in his toils.

Those two thinkers of Greece †

long pondered the matter:

for what brought the first to laugh,

to the second brought grief.

Famous has their opposition

been these twenty centuries,

yet without a resolution

that can so much as be divined;

to their two banners even now,

the world entire is drawn,

with the colours that we follow

determined by our disposition.

Democritus claiming that our one

worthy answer to the world is laughter;

Heraclitus that the world’s misfortunes

are cause for lamentation …

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.