"To a Dog Injured in the Street"
The Desert Music and Other Poems (1954)
Context: The cries of a dying dog
are to be blotted out
as best I can.
René Char
you are a poet who believes
in the power of beauty
to right all wrongs.
I believe it also.
With invention and courage
we shall surpass
the pitiful dumb beasts,
let all men believe it,
as you have taught me also
to believe it.
“When doctors differ who decides amid the milliard-headed throng?
Who save the madman dares to cry: "'Tis I am right, you all are wrong"?
"You all are right, you all are wrong," we hear the careless Soofi say,
"For each believes his glimm'ering lamp to be the gorgeous light of day."”
The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
Context: When doctors differ who decides amid the milliard-headed throng?
Who save the madman dares to cry: "'Tis I am right, you all are wrong"?
"You all are right, you all are wrong," we hear the careless Soofi say,
"For each believes his glimm'ering lamp to be the gorgeous light of day."
"Thy faith why false, my faith why true? 'tis all the work of Thine and Mine,
"The fond and foolish love of self that makes the Mine excel the Thine."
Cease then to mumble rotten bones; and strive to clothe with flesh and blood
The skel'eton; and to shape a Form that all shall hail as fair and good.
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Richard Francis Burton 78
British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, … 1821–1890Related quotes
A.J. Jacobs, "The 9:10 to Crazyland: George Clooney searches for George Clooney", Esquire, April 2008, pp. 104–105
How do you tell right from wrong? Where are the rules?
Creation seminars (2003-2005), The dangers of evolution
“Hard to say what's right when all I wanna do is wrong.”
“This to the right, that to the left hand strays,
And all are wrong, but wrong in different ways.”
Ille sinistrorsum, hie dextrorsum abit : unus utrique
Error, sed variis illudit partibus.
Book II, satire iii, line 50 (trans. Conington)
Satires (c. 35 BC and 30 BC)