One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.

The best poem is that whose worked-upon unmagical passages come closest, in texture and intensity, to those moments of magical accident.

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means, Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps... so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash or thunder in.

I think, that if I touched the earth, It would crumble; It is so sad and beautiful, So tremulously like a dream.

Especially when the October wind With frosty fingers punishes my hair, Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire And cast a shadow crab upon the land, By the sea's side, hearing the noise of birds, Hearing the raven cough in winter sticks, My busy heart who shudders as she talks Sheds the syllabic blood and drains her words.

Man’s wants remain unsatisfied till death. Then, when his soul is naked, is he one With the man in the wind, and the west moon, With the harmonious thunder of the sun