My grief and my smile begin in your face, my son.

Let the earth look at me, and bless me, for now I am fecund and sacred, like the palms and the furrows.

I have a faithful joy and a joy that is lost. One is like a rose, the other, a thorn. The one that was stolen I have not lost.

What the soul is to the body, so is the artist to his people.

There is the joy of being healthy and fair, but there is overall the beauty, the immense joy of being useful.

Now I am nothing but a veil; all my body is a veil beneath which a child sleeps.

In the secret of night, my prayer climbs like the liana, My prayer is, and I am not. It grows, and I perish. I have only my hard breath, my reason and my madness. I cling to the vine of my prayer. I tend it at the root of the stalk of night.