A fox looked at his shadow at sunrise and said, “I will have a camel for lunch today.” And all morning he went about looking for camels. But at noon he saw his shadow again—and he said, “A mouse will do.”
My soul and I went to the great sea to bathe. And when we reached the shore, we went about looking for a hidden and lonely place.
But as we walked, we saw a man sitting on a grey rock taking pinches of salt from a bag and throwing them into the sea.
“This is the pessimist,” said my soul, “Let us leave this place. We cannot bathe here.”
We walked on until we reached an inlet. There we saw, standing on a white rock, a man holding a bejeweled box, from which he took sugar and threw it into the sea.
“And this is the optimist,” said my soul, “And he too must not see our naked bodies.”
Further on we walked. And on a beach we saw a man picking up dead fish and tenderly putting them back into the water.
“And we cannot bathe before him,” said my soul. “He is the humane philanthropist.”
During the Second World War, I was going home one night along a street I seldom used. All the stores were closed except one—a small fruit store. An old Italian was inside to wait on customers. As I was paying him I saw that he was sad.
Passing the shop after school, he would look up at the sign and go on, glad that his own life had to do with books. Now at night when he saw the grey in his parents’ hair and heard their talk of that day’s worries and the next: lack of orders, if orders, lack of workers, if workers, lack of goods, if there were workers and goods, lack of orders again, for the tenth time he said, “I’m going in with you: there’s more
man, he said, sitting on the steps your car sure needs a wash and wax job I can do it for you for 5 bucks, I got the wax, I got the rags, I got everything I need.
I gave him the 5 and went upstairs. when I came down 4 hours later he was sitting on the steps drunk and offered me a can of beer. he said he’d get the car the next day.
the next day he got drunk again and I loaned him a dollar for a bottle of
On a road through the mountains with a friend many years ago I came to a curve on a slope where a clear stream flowed down flashing across dark rocks through its own echoes that could neither be caught nor forgotten it was the turning of autumn and already the mornings were cold with ragged clouds in the hollows long after sunrise but the pasture sagging like a roof the glassy water and flickering yellow leaves
Leo bends over his desk Gazing at a memorandum While Stuart stands beside him With a smile, saying, "Leo, the order for those desks Came in today From Youngstown Needle and Thread!" C. Loth Inc., there you are Like Balboa the conqueror Of those who want to buy office furniture Or bar fixtures In nineteen forty in Cincinnati, Ohio! Secretaries pound out Invoices on antique typewriters— Dactyllographs
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