more links, & raymond carver

I've just noticed that Al Ahram has got a whole page of articles, essays, remembrances about Mahfouz. Looking through them and thinking of his long, full, lucky life--what better than to make your living making the art you love, and be rewarded with praise and recognition of your contribution?--I'm reminded of one of Raymond Carver's last poems, from the magnificent collection A New Path to the Waterfall. The poem was written shortly before his death (like Said's, terribly and tragically young, from cancer) in 1988. It's called "Late Fragment":

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.