You must believe: a poem is a holy thing – a good poem, that is. The poem, even a short time after being written, seems no miracle; unwritten, it seems something beyond the capacity of the gods.
What falls away is always. And is near.
The soul has many motions, body one.
The poet: would rather eat a heart than a hambone.
Live in a perpetual great astonishment.
Be sure that whatever you are is you.
Teach as an old fishing guide takes out a beginner.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I fear those shadows most that start from my own feet.
Love alters all. Unblood my instinct, love.
Dreams drain the spirit if we dream too long.
O my poor words, bear with me.
What grace I have is enough.
What’s freedom for? To know eternity.
Brooding on God, I may become a man.
It’s your privilege to find me incomprehensible. I gave you my minutes; let them remain ours. I hope I haunt you.
Necessity starves on the stoop of invention.
She loved the wind because the wind loved me.
Who sighs from far away?
Oh, to be something else, yet still to be!
Am I reduced to the indignity of examples?