History Offers Us Vicarious Experience.

The Fate Of Peoples Is Made Like This, Two Men In Small Rooms. Forget The Coronations, The Conclaves Of Cardinals, The Pomp And Processions. This Is How The World Changes: A Counter Pushed Across A Table, A Pen Stroke That Alters The Force Of A Phrase, A Woman's Sigh As She Passes And Leaves On The Air A Trail Of Orange Flower Or Rose Water; Her Hand Pulling Close The Bed Curtain, The Discreet Sigh Of Flesh Against Flesh.

I'm One Of These Children Who Grew Up At The Knee Of My Grandmother And Her Elder Sister, Listening To Very Old People Talk About Their Memories.

So Many Years Of Preparation, For What Was Called Adult Life: Was It For This?

[h]ope Takes You By The Throat Like A Stranger, It Makes Your Heart Leap.

Though I Have Never Thought Of Myself As A Book Collector, There Are Shelves In Our House Browsed So Often, On So Many Rainy Winter Nights, That The Contents Have Seeped Into Me As If By Osmosis.