When you get a class reciting some great poems, it'll tear your heart out.

The voice does go up in a poem. It is an address, even if it is to oneself.

How can I turn from Africa and live?

Love After Love all your life, whom you have ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.

The poem is itself a mirror.

The time will come when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the other’s welcome.

The English language is nobody's special property.