In Order To Be Cruel We Have

As For September 11, Let Us Not Too Easily Grant The Americans Possession Of That Date On The Calendar. Like May 1 Or July 14 Or December 25, September 11 May Seem Full Of Significance To Some People, While To Other People It Is Just Another Day.

I Am Corrupted To The Bone With The Beauty Of This Forsaken World.

But It Is The Knowledge Of How Contingent My Unease Is, How Dependent On A Baby That Wails Beneath My Window One Day And Does Not Wail The Next, That Brings The Worst Shame To Me, The Greatest Indifference To Annihilation. I Know Somewhat Too Much; And From This Knowledge, Once One Has Been Infected, There Seems To Be No Recovering. I Ought Never To Have Taken My Lantern To See What Was Going On In The Hut By The Granary. On The Other Hand, There Was No Way, Once I Had Picked Up The Lantern, For Me To Put It Down Again. The Knot Loops In Upon Itself; I Cannot Find The End.

Anyone Who Says That Life Matters Less To An Animal Than It Does To Us Has Not Held In His Hands An Animal Fighting For Its Life. The Whole Of The Being Of The Animal Is Thrown Into That Fight, Without Reserve. When You Say That The Fight Lacks A Dimension Of Intellectual Or Imaginative Horror, I Agree. It Is Not The Mode Of Being Animals To Have An Intellectual Horror: Their Whole Being Is In The Living Flesh...i Urge You To Walk, Flank To Flank, Beside The Beast That Is Prodded Down The Chute To His Executioner.

I See No Marks Of Wordsworths Style Of Writing Or Style Of Thinking In My Own Work, Yet Wordsworth Is A Constant Presence When I Write About Human Beings And Their Relations To The Natural World.