Light Steering

               Ax
Whoever swings an ax
Knows the body of man
Will again be covered with fur.
The stench of blood and swamp water
Will return to its old resting place.
They'll spend their winters
Sleeping like the bears.
The skin on the breasts of their women
Will grow coarse. He who cannot
Grow teeth, will not survive.
He who cannot howl
Will not find his pack ...

These dark prophecies were gathered,
Unknown to myself, by my body
Which understands historical probabilities,
Lacking itself, in its essence, a future.
— Charles Simic, in Dismantling The Silence.

      Confessions of the Author
                              For Ernst Simon
Once with a light keel
I shipped out to the land of legends
through the storm of deeds and play,
With my gaze fixed on the goal
And in my blood the beguiling poison —
Then one descended to me
Who seized me by the hair
And spoke: Now render the Scriptures!

From that hour on the galley
Keeps my brain and hands on course,
The rudder writes characters,
My life disdains its honor
And the soul forgets that it sang.
All storms must stand and bow
When cruelly compelling in the silence
The speech of the spirit resounds.

Hammer your deeds in the rock, world!
The Word is wrought in the flood.
— Martin Buber, in A Believeing Humanism: Gleanings, p. 33.

       The Straight and Narrow Road
At each mile
each year
old men with closed faces
point out the road to children
with gestures of reinforced concrete.
— Jacques Prévert, in Paroles, p. 37.

It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such an opinion as is unworthy of him. For the one is unbelief, the other is contumely, and certainly superstition is the reproach of the Diety. Plutarch saith well to that purpose: Surely (saith he) I had rather a great deal men should say there was no such man at all as Plutarch, than that they should say that there was one Plutarch that would eat his children as soon as they were born; as the poets speak of Saturn. And as the contumely is greater towards God, so the danger is greater towards men. Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation, all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not, but superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy in the minds of men....
— Francis Bacon, Essay XVI, "Of Superstition," in Francis Bacon: Essays/Advanced Learning/New Atlantis & c., Richard Foster Jones (ed. & sel.), pp. 49-50.

....It was truly said, optimi consiliarii martui ["the best counsellors are dead"]; books will speak plain when counsellors blanch. Therefore it is good to be conversant in them, specially the books of such as themselves have been actors upon the stage.
— Francis Bacon, Essay XX, "Of Counsel," in Ibid., p. 62.

Some in their discourse desire rather commendation of wit [mind, native ability], in being able to hold arguments, than of judgement, in discerning what is true, as if it were a praise to know what might be said, and not what should be thought. Some have certain common places and themes wherein they are good, and want variety, which kind of poverty is for the most part tedious and when once perceived, ridiculous. The honourablest part of talk is to give the occasion [suggest the subject], and again to moderate [set limits] and pass to somewhat else, for then a man leads the dance. It is good in discourse and speech of conversation to vary and intermingle speech of the present occasion with arguments, tales with reasons, asking of questions with telling of opinions, and jest with earnest, for it is a dull thing to tire, and, as we say now, to jade [ride] any thing too far....
— Francis Bacon, Essay XXXII, "Of Discourse," in Ibid., p. 96.