At least half of your mind is always thinking, I'll be leaving; this won't last. It's a good Buddhist attitude. If I were a Buddhist, this would be a great help. As it is, I'm just sad.

A thinking mind is not swallowed up by what it comes to know. It reaches out to grasp something related to itself and to its present knowledge (and so knowable in some degree) but also separate from itself and from its present knowledge (not identical with these). In any act of thinking, the mind must reach across this space between known and unknown, linking one to the other but also keeping visible to difference. It is an erotic space.

Meanwhile music pounded / across hearts opening every valve to the desperate drama of being / a self in a song.

They were two superior eels at the bottom of the tank and they recognized each other like italics.

Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.

Desire doubled is love and love doubled is madness.

He came after Homer and before Gertrude Stein, a difficult interval for a poet.