"But for how much longer? (PW)... novo mundo 34

Per Wirtén

Unacknowledged, unseen, unmentioned
Poverty in Europe

Impoverished German children dream of the USA; one Greek person in four is behind with their most basic bills; sixty per cent of the poor in Romania have outdoor toilets. Cracks are appearing in Europe's beloved image of itself as the egalitarian alternative to the United States, writes Per Wirtén.

What do we really know about poverty in Europe? Not a lot. The constant flow of facts, images and stories from the other side of the Atlantic means I know more about American poverty than its European counterpart. There is a steady stream of books and articles about "the working poor" at Wal-Mart, Latinos in Los Angeles and Afro-Americans in run-down slum districts. How many of us have read books like Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich's account of struggling to get by in low-wage hell? Or avidly immersed ourselves in the slums of Baltimore in the TV series The Wire? (read the original text in: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-01-25-wirten-en.html)

"A blind intelligence, true" (JH) ... novo mundo 33

Jane Hirshfield
Optimism

Optimism
More and more I have come to admire resilience.

Not the simple resistance of a pillow,

whose foam returns over and over to the same shape,

but the sinuous tenacity of a tree:

finding the light newly blocked on one side,

it turns in another.

A blind intelligence, true.

But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers, mitochondria, figs--all this resinous, unretractable earth.

(in http://www.poetseers.org/contemporary_poets/jane_hirshfield/janep/optimism/)

"Two roads diverged in a wood" (RF)... novo mundo 32

Robert Frost
The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

(in http://www.poetseers.org/contemporary_poets/robert_frost_poems/the_road_not_taken)

"L'estude de Gargantua, selon la discipline de ses precepteurs (...) FR ...novo mundo 31

"LA VIE TRES HORRIFICQUE DU GRAND GARGANTUA PERE DE PANTAGRUEL.

Jadis composée par M. Alcofribas, abstracteur de Quinte Essence. Livre plein de Pantagruelisme.

AUX LECTEURS

Amis lecteurs, qui ce livre lisez,

Despouillez vous de toute affection;

Et, le lisant, ne vous scandalisez:

Il ne contient mal ne infection.

Vray est qu'icy peu de perfection

Vous apprendrez, si non en cas de rire;

Aultre argument ne peut mon cueur elire,

Voyant le dueil qui vous mine et consomme :

Mieulx est de ris que de larmes escripre,

Pour ce que rire est le propre de l'homme. (...) "

in (http://abu.cnam.fr/cgi-bin/donner_html?gargantua2, Rabelais, François - Edition Garnier (sans date, fin XIX)

Texte basé sur l'édition de François Juste, Lyon, 1542, dernier texte revu par Rabelais)