The historian is terribly responsible to what he can discern are the facts of the case, but he's nothing if he doesn't make out a case.

I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem.

It may be said that poems are in one way like icebergs: only about a third of their bulk appears above the surface of the page.

Mostly the thought and the verse come inseparably. In my poem Poetics, it's as close as I come to telling how I do it.

Why are stamps adorned with kings and presidents? That we may lick their hinder parts and thump their heads.

Till I, high in the tower of my time Among familiar ruins, began to cry For accident, sickness, justice, war and crime, Because all died, because I had to die. The snow fell, the trees stood, the promise kept, And a child I slept.

Religion and science both profess peace (and the sincerity of the professors is not being doubted), but each always turns out to have a dominant part in any war that is going or contemplated.