Tony Blair reading in NY.
There is no reading, there are no words, that can truly bring comfort
> those who are grieving the loss of their loved ones today; and no matter
> how we try to make sense of it all it is hard, so hard, to do.
> "Nine days on, there is still the shock and disbelief; there is anger;
> there is fear; but there is also, throughout the world, a profound sense
> of solidarity; there is courage; there is a surging of the human spirit.
> We wanted to be here today, to offer our support and sympathy to the
> families of the lost ones. Many are British as you know. So the bonds
> between our countries for so long so strong, are even stronger now.
> "For my reading I have chosen the final words of The Bridge of San Luis
> Rey written by Thornton Wilder in 1927. It is about a tragedy that took
> place in Peru, when a bridge collapsed over a gorge and five people
> died.
> "A witness to the deaths, wanting to make sense of them, to explain the
> ways of God to his fellow human beings, examined the lives of the people
> who died, and these words were said by someone who knew the victims.
> "'But soon we will die, and all memories of those five will have left
> earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the
> love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love
> that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of
> the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love. The only
> survival, the only meaning'."
>
> |
