What does it mean to suffer? Is it better to buffer ourselves from turmoil, or does the oil of hate and hurt serve some purpose? Are we animals in some circus, parading like elephants inelegantly, passing through wire hoops? We tire; we droop. Are we poor men in soup lines, hoping for salvation, fed with propitiation? Our faces show no elation: They grow ashen. Shall we cash in the bonds our mothers never gave us? Love's dearth has thus enslaved us. Just put us in our graves and let us live in Mother Earth.
A graduate of Andover and Columbia College, Columbia University, Tod Howard Hawks has been a poet and a human-rights advocate his entire adult life.