I know when dark-haired evening put on her bright silk at sunset, and, folding the sea sidled under the sheet with her starry laugh, that there'd be no rest, there'd be no forgetting. Is like telling mourners round the graveside about resurrection, they want the dead back.

The mirror is believed the way a poem is believed. It's believed because it's there.

If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average.

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.

I have never separated the writing of poetry from prayer. I have grown up believing it is a vocation, a religious vocation.

The poem is itself a mirror.

Any serious attempt to try to do something worthwhile is ritualistic.