secret brotherhood

'In Tereza's eyes, books were the emblems of a secret brotherhood. For she had but a single weapon against the world of crudity surrounding her: the books she took out of the municipal library ...'

The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Milan Kundera, 1984  

http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/feb/04/depression-bleak-stories-consoling-self-help 

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/24/neil-gaiman-face-facts-need-fiction 

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/15/neil-gaiman-future-libraries-reading-daydreaming 
 

Baja night sky, a photo by king damus on Flickr.

Invictus

By William Ernest Henley

 

Out of the night that covers me,

      Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

      For my unconquerable soul.

 

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/182194 

'Journey to the Interior'

Behind the Curtain, a photo by DAV.es on Flickr.

'As a blind man, lifting a curtain, knows it is morning,
I know this change:
On one side of silence there is no smile;
But when I breathe with the birds,
The spirit of wrath becomes the spirit of blessing,
And the dead begin from their dark to sing in my sleep.'

Extract from Journey to the Interior,
The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke (1968)
Faber and Faber Ltd.

Theodore Roethke
1908-63
Born in Michigan. He taught at the University of Seattle.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/theodore-roethke

http://www.unz.org/Pub/Encounter-1964jun-00050