In the secret of night, my prayer climbs like the liana, My prayer is, and I am not. It grows, and I perish. I have only my hard breath, my reason and my madness. I cling to the vine of my prayer. I tend it at the root of the stalk of night.

I write poetry because I can’t disobey the impulse; it would be like blocking a spring that surges up in my throat. For a long time I’ve been the servant of the song that comes, that appears and can’t be buried away. How to seal myself up now?…It no longer matters to me who receives what I submit. What I carry out is, in that respect, greater and deeper than I, I am merely the channel.

What the soul is to the body, so is the artist to his people.

My grief and my smile begin in your face, my son.

You shall create beauty not to excite the senses but to give sustenance to the soul.

All night I have suffered; all night my flesh has trembled to bring forth its gift. The sweat of death is on my forehead; but it is not death, it is life!

The poet is an untier of knots, and love without words is a knot, and it drowns.