<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><p style="margin: 0px 0px 6px;" class=""><font color="#1d2129" class=""><span style="letter-spacing: -0.11999999731779099px;" class="">Proud</span></font></p><div class=""><br class=""></div><p style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); letter-spacing: -0.12px;" class="">Like those crazy Babylonians, who raised a tower<br class="">higher than their own I.Q.; so gigantic,<br class="">it could only have been built by God —<span class="gmail-text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;"><br class="">a fact that they forgot, until they fell,<br class="">in argument, apart, like so many unmortared</span></p><div class="gmail-text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); letter-spacing: -0.12px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 6px;" class="">parts of speech. Babylon, remember?<br class="">They fell, and we grew up<br class="">to learn two languages — one for money,<br class="">and one for love; one for saying what we mean,<br class="">and one for hiding it. I'm thinking of my brother,</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px;" class="">who lost his voice, and then his wife<br class="">because he was too proud to say, "Please, Don't Go."<br class="">That architect, my brother,<br class="">who sleeps now on his office couch,<br class="">twitching like a racedog in a business suit,</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px;" class="">a dog who dreams he is so far ahead of all<br class="">the competition, he'll be impossible to catch.<br class="">I'm speaking of my brother, but I might as well<br class="">be talking of my enormously rich and arrogant<br class="">other relative, the United States — a country so goliath,</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px;" class="">it casts a shadow over half the world;<br class="">so ambidextrous, it can lie and listen to itself<br class="">at once. And isn't that the story of the mind?<br class="">Which started as a little church,<br class="">with open doors,</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px;" class="">but wound up as a fortress, with foot-thick walls<br class="">and a bristling defense. Somewhere inside,<br class="">we are lost, muttering about our enemies<br class="">and making up the truth. Truth is,<br class="">the self is a disease, a wound</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px;" class="">which grows infected with the fear<br class="">that it will never have enough.<br class="">And egomania<br class="">is standing on a mountaintop<br class="">and sucking down great lungfuls</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px;" class="">of a better quality of air<br class="">than what the common people get; it feels<br class="">like freedom and it tastes like truth;<br class="">you laugh, and every forty seconds, pledge<br class="">a new allegiance to yourself. And maybe</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px;" class="">we will have to go on climbing to some<br class="">hopeless height, to some fantastic speed,<br class="">like Icarus the biggest day of his career.<br class="">Maybe there are pinnacles of ignorance,<br class="">altitudes of stupid, from which</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px;" class="">recovery is impossible. I think<br class="">of my brother, who might have saved himself<br class="">with just a single word, however late and lame.<br class="">I think of my country,<br class="">which goes on talking.</p><p style="margin: 6px 0px;" class=""><br class=""></p><p style="margin: 6px 0px;" class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>- Tony Hoagland</p></div></body></html>