Epigraph

The mild valley of those who are eternally alive.

They walk by green waters.

With red ink they draw on my breast

A heart and the signs of a kindly welcome.

Czesław Miłosz

Now curlew cry me down to kiss the mouths of their dust.

Dylan Thomas

Passive as a bird that sees all, in flight,

and carries in its heart,

rising in the sky,

an unforgiving conscience.

Pier Paolo Pasolini,

translated by Ferlinghetti & Valente

I am angry to the depths of my soul that the earth has been so injured while we were all bemused

by supposed monuments of value and intellect,

vaults of bogus cultural riches. I feel the worth of my own life diminished by the tedious years I have spent acquiring competence in the arcana of mediocre invention, for all the world like one of those people who knows all there is to know about some defunct comic-book hero or television series.

The grief borne home to others while I and my kind have been thus occupied lies on my conscience like a crime.

Marilynne Robinson

By hammer and hand all arts do stand.

Motto of the Worshipful Company of Blacksmiths