Things that matter most

January 17, 2013

Things that matter most
Must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

You need not see

January 1, 2013

You need not see what someone is doing
to know if it is his vocation,

you have only to watch his eyes:
a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon

making a primary incision,
a clerk completing a bill of lading,

wear the same rapt expression,
forgetting themselves in a function.

How beautiful it is,
that eye-on-the-object look.

— W.H. Auden