What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup.

That's metaphysics, my dear fellow. It's forbidden me by my doctor, my stomach won't take it.

What for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but the irresistible power of unarmed truth.

As far as modern writing is concerned, it is rarely rewarding to translate it, although it might be easy. Translation is very much like copying paintings.

How wonderful to be alive, he thought. But why does it always hurt?

February. Get ink, shed tears. Write of it, sob your heart out, sing, While torrential slush that roars Burns in the blackness of the spring. Go hire a buggy. For six grivnas, Race through the noice of bells and wheels To where the ink and all you grieving Are muffled when the rainshower falls. To where, like pears burnt black as charcoal, A myriad rooks, plucked from the trees, Fall down into the puddles, hurl Dry sadness deep into the eyes. Below, the wet black earth shows through, With sudden cries the wind is pitted, The more haphazard, the more true The poetry that sobs its heart out.

No bad man can be a good poet.