Qantara

What force there is in fish that live their years
in the cold darks of the sea, swimming the darks

In August once, I dozed on an unused bridge
to hang in the very world, in the teeming air
...
absorbed in certainties that never fail, though blind.

---William Bronk.

~~~

The way books are randomly placed on the shelves at Readings is wonderful. Yesterday you found (and bought) Snow Country next to Malone Dies Alone. May not read either, but still, the sheer surprise of unforeseen connections, the bridges...whether we walk them or not, spanning out like blind chance in a mechanical universe.

~~~

Each person that enters the world establishes a new relation to it, sees it with new eyes; she enters the door, is the door. The last person to be born on earth will have no time, but will also, miraculously, be a record of all time, since everyone would have lived in her. The search for God is meaningless if we die alone. The last person will look on things with kindness, as if they were the last things, beautiful in themselves. And like the first person, she will be startled, knowing much, full of longing. Today, the last person lives in each one of us.