The real damage is done by those millions who want to ‘survive.’ The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes.
Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves-or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature.
Those who live small, mate small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what?
Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.
— Sophie Scholl —
roc…
We are come late to the love of birds
for we are come late to love.
Before we had been nothing:
a fossilized egg, a tired metaphor, old as mutton.
Now, the sharp twinge of middle age
and we are caught in love’s punctured balloon.
In banana peel sobriety.
Furred epithet, feathered lash.
We are come late to the mythology of love,
the beefheart stain of the great winged roc
upon the ground of our imaginings,
soft like the centres of some candies.
Soft like the quilted centres of our beds,
our quivering bird organs.
Give us the sweeping shadow,
down from the mountains of Araby.
Give us the claws that catch
us from the desert path, swoop us,
fat white sheep in the meadow,
into that prickled nest, high, up high.
— Sandra Kasturi —