The weight of misfortune has stooped my shouldersBut I don’t intend to stop for a good while yet;I afflict my own destinyAnd don’t want anyone to mourn for my fate.I’ve made peace with God on my lossesAnd agreed with him on the epitaphsThat should be written about my senseless wars.
I am not the black cat.There were four of us;my grandmother,a black cat,a myth,and I.My grandmother oftentold us a myth.When you are ill, she said,if a black catcomes and sits on your bedit means that youwill die soon.I was only six,seriously ill.Our black cat
VIWe lack, yet cannot fix upon the lack:Not this, nor that; yet somewhat, certainly.We see the things we do not yearn to seeAround us: and what see we glancing back?Lost hopes that leave our hearts upon the rack,Hopes that were never ours yet seem’d to be,For which we steer’d on life’s salt stormy seaBraving the sunstroke and the frozen pack.If thus to look behind is all in vain,And all in vain to look to left or right,Why face we not our future once again,Launching with hardier hearts across the main,Straining dim eyes to catch the invisible sight,And strong to bear ourselves in patient pain?IX