Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead: A Novel

People have a duty toward Animals to lead them—in successive lives—to Liberation. We’re all traveling in the same direction, from dependence to freedom, from ritual to free choice.”

First, we each wrote out our own translation, in the trochaic meter more natural to Polish verse,

“Nothing’s obvious at first glance,” he snapped with uncharacteristic vigor, causing the remark to stick in my mind.

We have this body of ours, a troublesome piece of luggage, we don’t really know anything about it and we need all sorts of Tools to find out about its most natural processes.

Low, dark clouds had been scudding across the sky all day, and now, late in the evening, they were rubbing their wet bellies against the hills.

Every Night & every Morn Some to Misery are Born Every Morn & every Night Some are Born to sweet delight, Some are born to Endless Night. This is Blake’s most famous verse. It’s impossible to translate it into Polish without losing the rhythm, rhyme and childlike brevity. Dizzy tried many times, and it was like solving a charade.

At that point I felt a surge of Anger, genuine, not to say Divine Anger. It flooded me from inside in a burning-hot wave. This energy made me feel great, as if it were lifting me off the ground, a mini Big Bang within the universe of my body.

V. A Light in the Rain

I interpret everything as abnormal, terrible and threatening. I see nothing but Catastrophes. But as the Fall is the beginning, can we possibly fall even lower? In any case, I know the date of my own death, and that lets me feel free.