I was more worn out with the "Odyssey" than it was with the "Iliad." I mean, just comparing those two - you can see how it's changing, how the language of the "Iliad" is somehow monstrously new - and that language of the "Odyssey" is more comfortable, even for us.

Comfortable means gradually more and more flattened down, more and more blunt - less and less sharp and biting into you.

Words bounce. Words, if you let them, will do what they want to do and what they have to do.

There is something about the way that Greek poets, say Aeschylus, use metaphor that really attracts me. I don't think I can imitate it, but there's a density to it that I think I'm always trying to push towards in English.

When I desire you a part of me is gone.

A refugee population is hungry for language and aware that anything can happen.

Could you visit me in dreams? That would cheer me. Sweet to see friends in the night, however short the time.