We make our songs as we must, from fragments of the joy and sorrow of
living. What Life itself may be, we cannot know till all men share the
chance to know.
Until the day of some more equal portion, there is no human brightness
unhaunted by this black shadow: the thought of those unnumbered who pay
all the heavier cost of life, to live and die without knowledge that
there is any Joy of Living.
No song could face such blackness, but for the will to share, and for
hope of the day of sharing.
Upon that hope and that mindfulness, the poems in this book are linked
together.