Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.
The light comes brighter from the east; the cawOf restive crows is sharper on the ear.
I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing, In my veins, in my bones I feel it,- The small water seeping upward, The tight grains parting at last. When sprouts break out, Slippery as fish, I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath-wet.
Being, not doing, is my first joy.
I can’t go on flying apart just for those who want the benefit of a few verbal kicks. My God, do you know what poems like that cost? They’re not written vicariously: they come out of actual suffering, real madness.
So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying, An intolerable waiting, A longing for another place and time, Another condition.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go.
The stones were sharp, The wind came at my back; Walking along the highway, Mincing like a cat.
The fields stretch out in long unbroken rows. We walk aware of what is far and close. Here distance is familiar as a friend. The feud we kept with space comes to an end.
And what a congress of stinks!- Roots ripe as old bait, Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich, Leaf mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks, Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.
Love begets love. This torment is my joy.
And I rejoiced in being what I was.
You must believe a poem is a holy thing, a good poem, that is.
I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.
Art is our defense against hysteria and death.
What have I done, dear God, to deserve this perpetual feeling that I’m almost ready to begin something really new?
In our age, if a boy or girl is untalented, the odds are in favor of their thinking they want to write.
What falls away is always. And is near.
God bless the roots! Body and soul are one.
The soul has many motions, body one.