There’s no money in poetry, but there’s no poetry in money, either.
When the immense drugged universe explodes In a cascade of unendurable colour And leaves us gasping naked, This is no more than the ectasy of chaos: Hold fast, with both hands, to that royal love Which alone, as we know certainly, restores Fragmentation into true being. Ecstasy of Chaos.
To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.
Wakeful they lie.
If there’s no money in poetry, neither is there poetry in money.
English poetic education should, really, not begin with The Canterbury Tales, not with the Odyssey, not even with Genesis, but with Song of Amergin.
There is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting.
I was last in Rome in AD 540 when it was full of Goths and their heavy horses. It has changed a great deal since then.
Kill if you must, but never hate: Man is but grass and hate is blight, The sun will scorch you soon or late, Die wholesome then, since you must fight.
Intuition is the supra-logic that cuts out all the routine processes of thought and leaps straight from the problem to the answer.
Every English poet should master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them.
As you are woman, so be lovely: As you are lovely, so be various, Merciful as constant, constant as various, So be mine, as I yours for ever.
Before an attack, the platoon pools all its available cash and the survivors divide it up afterwards. Those who are killed can’t complain, the wounded would have given far more than that to escape as they have, and the unwounded regard the money as a consolation prize for still being here.
So when I’m killed, don’t wait for me, Walking the dim corridor; In Heaven or Hell, don’t wait for me, Or you must wait for evermore. You’ll find me buried, living-dead In these verses that you’ve read.
The old lady told me that all the girls in the village of Annezin prayed every night for the War to end, and for the English to go away – as soon as their money was spent. And that the clause about the money was always repeated in case God should miss it.
Every fairy child may keep Two strong ponies and ten sheep; All have houses, each his own, Built of brick or granite stone; They live on cherries, they run wild I’d love to be a Fairy’s child.
When a dream is born in you With a sudden clamorous pain, When you know the dream is true And lovely, with no flaw nor stain, O then, be careful, or with sudden clutch You’ll hurt the delicate thing you prize so much.
As was the custom in such cases, the pear tree was charged with murder and sentenced to be uprooted and burned.