Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies 
are not starving someplace, they are starving 
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils. 
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants. 
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not 
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not 
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women 
at the fountain are laughing together between 
the suffering they have known and the awfulness 
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody

in the village is very sick. There is laughter 
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta, 
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay. 
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction, 
we lessen the importance of their deprivation. 
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, 
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have 
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless 
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only 
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.

If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down, 
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude. 
We must admit there will be music despite everything. 
We stand at the prow again of a small ship 
anchored late at night in the tiny port 
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront 
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning. 
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat 
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth 
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

-by Jack Gilbert