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21 " What did I know, what did I knowof love's austere and lonely offices? "
― Robert Hayden , Collected Poems
22 " Sleepless, I stare from the dark hospital room at shadows of a flower and its leaves the nightlight fixes like a blotto on the corridor wall. "
23 " Know that love has chosen you to live his crucial purposes. Know that love has chosen you. And will not pamper you nor spare;demands obedience to all the rigorous laws of risk, does not pamper, will not spare. Oh, master now love's instruments—complex and not for the fearful, simple and not for the foolish. Master now love's instruments. I who love you tell you this, even as the pitiful killer waits for me, I who love you tell you this. "
24 " Fed the fires that consume us now, the fire that will save. "
25 " Ars Longa Which is crueller Vita Brevis life or art? "
26 " Fury of truth: fury of righteousness become angelic evildemonic good? "
27 " here among them the americans this baffling multi people extremes and variegations their noise restlessness their almost frightening energy how best describe these aliens in my reports to The Counselors disguise myself in order to study them unobserved adapting their varied pigmentations white black red brown yellow the imprecise and strangering distinctions by which they live by which they justify their cruelties to one anothercharming savages enlightened primitives brash new comers lately sprung up in our galaxy how describe them do they indeed know what or who they are do not seem to yet no other beings in the universe make more extravagant claimsfor their importance and identity "
28 " their vaunted liberty no body pushes me around i have heard them say land of the free they sing what dothey fear mistrust betray more than the freedom they boast of in their ignorant pride have seen the squalid ghettoes in their violent cities paradox on paradox how have the americans managed to survive "
29 " america as much a problem in metaphysics as it is a nation earthly entity an iota in our galaxy an organism that changes even as i examine it fact and fantasy never twice the same so many variables "
30 " Ay! you creatures who have walked on seas of money all your foreign lives! Por caridad. "