“I don’t have a poem called ‘Snow,’ and I’m not going to the theater this evening.  Your newspaper will look like it’s made a mistake.”

“Don’t be so sure.  There are those who despise us for writing the news before it happens.  They fear us not because we are journalists but because we can predict the future; you should see how amazed they are when things turn out exactly as we’ve written them.  And quite a few things do happen only because we’ve written them up first.  This is what modern journalism is all about.  I know you won’t want to stand in the way of our being modern – you don’t want to break our hearts – so that is why I am sure you will write a poem called ‘Snow’ and then come to the theater to read it.”

The silence of snow, thought the man sitting just behind the bus driver.  If this were the beginning of a poem, he would have called the thing he felt inside him the silence of snow.

It isn’t enough even to be a poet…that’s why politics still casts such a shadow over our lives.  But even having said this, neither would find it in him to add what he could not admit even to himself: It’s because we failed to find happiness in poetry that we find ourselves longing for the shadow of politics.

“As for these Islamists, they go from door to door in groups, paying house visits; they give women pots and pans, and those machines that squeeze oranges, and boxes of soap, cracked wheat, and detergent.  They concentrate on the poor neighborhoods; they ingratiate themselves with the women; they bring out hooked needles and sew gold thread onto the children’s shoulders to protect them against evil.  They say, ‘Give your vote to the Prosperity Party, the party of God; we’ve fallen into this destitution because we’ve wandered off the path of God.’ The men talk to the men, the women talk to the women.  They win the trust of the angry and the humiliated unemployed; they sit with their wives, who don’t know where the next meal is coming from, and they give them hope; promising more gifts, they get them to promise their votes in return.  We’re not just talking about the lowest of the low.  Even people with jobs – even tradesmen – respect them, because the Islamists are more hardworking, more honest, more modest than anyone else.”