Without Guilt / What Is A Man?

Never In All Their History Have Men Been Able Truly To Conceive Of The World As One: A Single Sphere, A Globe, Having The Qualities Of A Globe, A Round Earth In Which All The Directions Eventually Meet, In Which There Is No Center Because Every Point, Or None, Is Center - An Equal Earth Which All Men Occupy As Equals. The Airman's Earth, If Free Men Make It, Will Be Truly Round: A Globe In Practice, Not In Theory.

The Map Of America Is A Map Of Endlessness, Of Opening Out, Of Forever And Ever. No Man's Face Would Make You Think Of It But His Hope Might, His Courage Might.

Wildness And Silence Disappeared From The Countryside, Sweetness Fell From The Air, Not Because Anyone Wished Them To Vanish Or Fall But Because Throughways Had To Floor The Meadows With Cement To Carry The Automobiles Which Advancing Technology Produced. Tropical Beaches Turned Into High-priced Slums Where Thousand-room Hotels Elbowed Each Other For Glimpses Of Once-famous Surf Not Because Those Who Loved The Beaches Wanted Them There But Because Enormous Jets Could Bring A Million Tourists Every Year - And Therefore Did.

Poetry Which Owes No Man Anything, Owes Nevertheless One Debt - An Image Of The World In Which Men Can Again Believe.

There Is Only One Thing More Painful Than Learning From Experience And That Is Not Learning From Experience.