..our world in stupor lies...

..Defenseless under the night Our world in stupor lies; Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame. from "1 September 1939" by W.H. Auden

Were I a King, by Edward de Vere

Painting by Hans Holbein, the Younger.

Venus and Amor, 1524-25.

Were I a King

Were I a king I could command content ;

Were I obscure, unknown should be my cares;

And were I dead, no thoughts should me torment,

Nor words, nor wrongs, nor loves, nor hopes, nor fears.

A doubtful choice, of three things one to crave,

A kingdom, or a cottage, or a grave.

Cornel West

"I cannot be an optimist but I am a prisoner of hope."
— Cornel West

"Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public"
— Cornel West

"Aesthetics have substantial political consequences. How one views oneself as beautiful or not beautiful or desirable or not desirable has deep consequences in terms of one’s feelings of self-worth and one’s capacity to be a political agent."
— Cornel West (Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life)

"To accept your country without betraying it, you must love it for that which shows what it might become. America -- this monument to the genius of ordinary men and women, this place where hope becomes capacity, this long, halting turn of 'no' into the 'yes' -- needs citizens who love it enough to re-imagine and re-make it."
— Cornel West

I Died For Beauty by Emily Dickinson

I died for beauty, but was scarce Adjusted in the tomb, When one who died for truth was lain In an adjoining room. He questioned softly why I failed? "For beauty," I replied. "And I for truth - the two are one; We brethren are," he said. And so, as kinsmen met a-night, We talked between the rooms, Until the moss had reached our lips, And covered up our names.

Illustration©2010Babetteandfriends