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The Good God and the Evil God met on the mountain top. The Good God said, “Good day to you, brother.” The Evil God did not answer. And the Good God said, “You are in a bad humour today.” “Yes,” said the Evil God, “for of late I have been often mistaken for you, called by your name, and treated as if I were you, and it ill-pleases me.” And the Good God said, “But I too have been mistaken for you and called by your name.” The Evil God walked away cursing the stupidity of man.

"How seldom, friend! a good great man inherits Honour or wealth with all his worth and pains! It sounds like stories from the land of spirits If any man obtain that which he merits Or any merit that which he obtains." REPLY TO THE ABOVE For shame, dear friend, renounce this canting strain! What would'st thou have a good great man obtain? Place? titles? salary? a gilded chain? Or throne of corses which his sword had slain? Greatness and goodness are not means , but ends ! Hath he not always treasures, always friends, The good great man? three treasures, LOVE, and LIGHT, And CALM THOUGHTS, regular as infant's breath: And three firm friends, more sure than day and night, HIMSELF, his MAKER, and the ANGEL DEATH!

Before the war leaned in and blew out the candles, there were many long days where lovers called themselves lovers and a house was a dream but also four walls, a roof. A father called to his daughter to see the monarch butterflies, pausing in their migration to fan the goldenrod, a tiger in each coy disclosure. A young man reached for a blackberry and found draped on a branch a green snake the color of matcha. A snake the color of matcha sighed in the sun. People drove in cars. There were jobs and someone had to work every morning. A man quit his job but it was no tragedy. He didn’t like the work. Another man slid in and found it comfortable enough, and just as easily slid in beside the man’s wife and into the everyday rhythms of his life and that was no tragedy either. After rains, a ring of mushrooms would delicately crack the earth. Spanish moss harbored red mites. The sky wasn’t interesting. No one looked up.

Good King Wenceslas look’d out, On the Feast of Stephen; When the snow lay round about, Deep, and crisp, and even: Brightly shone the moon that night, Though the frost was cruel, When a poor man came in sight, Gath’ring winter fuel. “Hither page and stand by me, If thou know’st it, telling, Yonder peasant, who is he? Where and what his dwelling?” “Sire, he lives a good league hence. Underneath the mountain; Right against the forest fence, By Saint Agnes’ fountain.” “Bring me flesh,and bring me wine, Bring me pine-logs hither: Thouand I will see him dine, When we bear them thither.” Page and monarch forth they went, Forth they went together; Through the rudewind’s wild lament, And the bitter weather. “Sire, the night is darker now, And the wind blows stronger; Fails my heart, I know now how, I can go no longer.” “Mark my footsteps, good my page; Tread thou in them boldly; Thou shalt find the winter’s rage Freeze thy blood less coldly.” In his master’s steps he trod, Where the snow lay dinted; Heat was in the very sod Which the Saint had printed. Therefore, Christian men, be sure, Wealth or rank possessing, Ye who now will bless the poor, Shall yourselves find blessing.

When some people talk about money They speak as if it were a mysterious lover Who went out to buy milk and never Came back, and it makes me nostalgic For the years I lived on coffee and bread, Hungry all the time, walking to work on payday Like a woman journeying for water From a village without a well, then living One or two nights like everyone else On roast chicken and red wine.

“Good morning, dear students,” the principal said. “Please put down your pencils and go back to bed. Today we will spend the day playing outside, then take the whole school on a carnival ride. “We’ll learn to eat candy while watching TV, then listen to records and swing from a tree. We’ll also be learning to draw on the walls, to scream in the classrooms and run in the halls. “So bring in your skateboard, your scooter, your bike. It’s time to be different and do what you like. The teachers are going to give you a rest. You don’t have to study. There won’t be a test. “And if you’d prefer, for a bit of a change, feel free to go wild and act really strange. Go put on a clown suit and dye your hair green, and copy your face on the Xerox machine. “Tomorrow it’s back to the regular grind. Today, just go crazy. We really don’t mind. So tear up your homework. We’ll give you an A. Oh wait. I’m just kidding. It’s April Fools’ Day.”

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then? But sucked on country pleasures, childishly? Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den? ’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be. If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee. And now good-morrow to our waking souls, Which watch not one another out of fear; For love, all love of other sights controls, And makes one little room an everywhere. Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone, Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown, Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one. My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears, And true plain hearts do in the faces rest; Where can we find two better hemispheres, Without sharp north, without declining west? Whatever dies, was not mixed equally; If our two loves be one, or, thou and I Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

We say the trees are a canopy in mid July, as if that's a special description of home. Walking down the hill to see a friend, I have good news and bad news for him. We say canopy made out of stars as our special way to describe the universe to ourselves. So which one will my friend choose today? Canopy of trees gives way to the sky; I'm walking now thinking all the way which one will he choose good or bad which one? I guess I can just say instead I love the way you fixed up the place and these colors. At a certain age a man can begin to say things like that to his friends.

A friend calls, so I ask him to stop by. We sip old Scotch, the good stuff, order in, some Indian—no frills too fine for him or me, particularly since it's been ages since we made the time. Two drinks in, we've caught up on our plans. I've sleepwalked through the last few years by rote; he's had a nasty rough patch, quote unquote, on the home front. So, we commiserate, cupping our lowballs in our hands. It's great to see him, good to have a friend who feels the same as you about his lot— that, while some grass is greener, your small plot is crudely arable, and though you're not so young, it's still not quite the end. As if remembering then, he spills his news. Though I was pretty lit, I swear it's true, it was as if a gold glow filled the room and shone on him, a sun-shaft piercing through dense clouds, behind which swept long views. In that rich light, he looked not like my friend but some acquaintance brushed by on the train. Had his good fortune kept me from the same, I had to wonder, a zero-sum game that gave the night its early end? Nothing strange. Our drinks were done, that's all. We haven't spoken since. By morning, I couldn't remember half of what the guy had said, just his good news, my slurred goodbye, the click of the latch, the quiet hall.

From the kindness of my parents I suppose it was that I held that belief about suffering imagining that if only it could come to the attention of any person with normal feelings certainly anyone literate who might have gone to college they would comprehend pain when it went on before them and would do something about it whenever they saw it happen in the time of pain the present they would try to stop the bleeding for example with their own hands but it escapes their attention or there may be reasons for it the victims under the blankets the meat counters the maimed children the animals the animals staring from the end of the world