"Who are my contemporaries?" Juan Gelman asks himself.
Juan says that sometimes he comes across men who smell of fear, in Buenos Aires, Paris, or anywhere in the world, and feels that these men are not his contemporaries. But there is a Chinese who, thousands of years ago, wrote a poem about a goatherd who is far from his beloved and yet can hear in the middle of the night, in the middle of the snow, the sound of her comb running through her hair. And reading this distant poem, Juan finds that yes, these people--the poet, the goatherd and the woman--are truly his contemporaries.

Eduardo Galeano in The Book of Embraces by Eduardo Galeano, Cedric Belfrage, translator, Mark Schafer, translator

 

To Practice This Thought:
Send a note of appreciation to someone who shares your enthusiasms and always seems to be on the same wavelength.

 

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