He was his own leftover, the spat-out scrag. He was what his brain could make nothing of.

It took the whole of Creation to produce my foot, my each feather: now I hold Creation in my foot.

I shall also take you forth and carve our names together in a yew tree, haloed with stars.

I think it was Milosz, the Polish poet, who when he lay in a doorway and watched the bullets lifting the cobbles out of the street beside him realised that most poetry is not equipped for life in a world where people actually die. But some is.

You are who you choose to be.

In the pit of red You hid from the bone-clinic whiteness But the jewel you lost was blue.

And that's how we measure out our real respect for people—by the degree of feeling they can register, the voltage of life they can carry and tolerate—and enjoy. End of sermon. As Buddha says: live like a mighty river. And as the old Greeks said: live as though all your ancestors were living again through you.