The Guardian Angel
Dear Reader
There seems to be some dispute about whether Voltaire actually said: ' I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it'. Salman Rushdie, the author, was stabbed not fatally but pretty horrifically, two days ago in New York. The man who attacked him did so, apparently, because he was insulted by something he had read or heard about in one of Salman's books. The insult was to the Prophet Mohammad.
For myself anything said about Jesus Christ that is blasphemous upsets me. I remember watching the film "The Life of Brian" and crying because I thought it was so awful to mock Jesus. I still feel like that. But the argument today is about whether or not you can, in a democracy, write whatever you like and that it is perfectly legitimate.
I think writers should be allowed to write whatever they think and feel but do so with sensitivity to others and their beliefs.
*
From John Ruskin, 1879, August 16th, in Lancashire
'Looking over my kitchen garden.....I found it one miserable mass of weeds gone to seed; the roses in the higher garden putrefied into brown sponges, feeling like dead snails; and half-ripe strawberries all rotten at the stalks.'
From Dorothy Wordsworth, 1800, August 20th, in Westmorland
'Walked with John round the two lakes (Grasmere and Rydal Water) gathered white foxglove seeds'.
*
Guardian Angel (Sheffield, 1950)
The small ragged children
stood at the open front door
rubbing their eyes, crying,
they were hungry,
they were tired.
The woman, wearing a red shawl,
silver slippers and silver earrings,
embraced them,
hastened into the house,
stayed for days, and
the children loved her.
She didn't ask for money,
they didn't know her name,
but when their mother came
home from hospital,
she simply disappeared,
vanished into the night.
And nobody saw her go.
*
With very best wishes, Patricia
No comments:
Post a Comment