It never seems to occur to anyone that each reader is different, and that even those who might be said to resemble each other will each bring an individual set of experiences and references to their reading, and interpret and misinterpret it according to these.
Poetry is mostly hunches.
In the increasingly convincing darkness The words become palpable, like a fruit That is too beautiful to eat.
And so we turn the page over. To think of starting. This is all there is.
There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.
How many people came and stayed a certain time, Uttered light or dark speech that became part of you Like light behind windblown fog and sand Filtered and influenced by it, until no part Remains that is surely you.
Just when I thought there wasn’t room enough for another thought in my head, I had this great idea –.
Silly girls your heads full of boys.
Until, accustomed to disappointments, you can let yourself rule and be ruled by these strings or emanations that connect everything together, you haven’t fully exorcised the demon of doubt that sets you in motion like a rocking horse that cannot stop rocking.
The winter does what it can for its children.
I lost my ridiculous accent without acquiring another.
Each servant stamps the reader with a look.
The soul establishes itself. But how far can it swim out through the eyes And still return safely to its nest?
Will occur as time grows more open about it.
Once you’ve lived in France, you don’t want to live anywhere else, including France.
Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you, At incredible speed, traveling day and night, Through blizzards and desert heat, across torrents, through narrow passes. But will he know where to find you, Recognize you when he sees you, Give you the thing he has for you?
Not until it starts to stink does the inevitable happen.
The gray glaze of the past attacks all know-how...
If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.
A yak is a prehistoric cabbage; of that, we can be sure.