this poem, a partial history of my stupidity, was inspired by a czeslaw milosz poem in which milosz claimed that a history of his own stupidity could fill many volumes. >> traffic was heavy coming off the bridge and i took the road to the right, the wrong one, and got stuck in the car for hours. most nights i rushed out into the evening without paying attention to the trees, whose names i didn't know, or the birds, which flew heedlessly on. i couldn't relinquish my desires or accept them, and so i strolled along like a tiger that wanted to spring but was still afraid of the wildness within. the iron bars seemed invisible to others, but i carried a cage around inside me. i cared too much what other people thought and made remarks i shouldn't have made. i was silent when i should have spoken. forgive me philosophers, i read the stoics but never understood them. i felt that i was living the wrong life, spiritually speaking, while halfway around the world thousands of people were being slaughtered, some of them by my countrymen. so i walked on--distracted, lost in thought-- and forgot to attend