Is it a coincidence that stories from the private life became more popular just as the grand hope for public redemption through revolution was beginning to sour? I witnessed a similar shift in taste in my own time. In the 1960s, while a hopeful vision of a just society arose again, countless poems and plays concerning politics and public life were written, read, and performed. But after the hope diminished and public life seemed less and less trustworthy, this subject was less in style.

Before a secret is told, one can often feel the weight of it in the atmosphere.

But still, the other voice, the intuitive, returns, like grass forcing its way through concrete.

We are nature. We are nature seeing nature. The red-winged blackbird flies in us.

Waging war is not a primary physical need.

The mind can forget what the body, defined by each breath, subject to the heart beating, does not.

I know I am made from this earth, as my mother's hands were made from this earth, as her dreams came from this earth and all that I know, I know in this earth, the body of the bird, this pen, this paper, these hands, this tongue speaking, all that I know speaks to me through this earth.