Who am I, where have I been, and where am I going?

God, let me remember all good losers.

I can remember only a few of the strange and curious words now dead but living and spoken by the English people a thousand years ago.

Poetry is an art practiced with the terribly plastic material of human language.

Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.

Lips half-willing in a doorway. Lips half-singing at a window. Eyes half-dreaming in the walls. Feet half-dancing in a kitchen. Even the clocks half-yawn the hours And the farmers make half-answers.

Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer.