But he cannot see a connection between the end of yearning and the end of poetry. Is that what growing up amounts to: growing out of yearning, of passion, of all intensities of the soul?

I said to myself, 'If you don't sit down to it today, when will you ever sit down to it?'

In my experience poetry speaks to you either at first sight or not at all. A flash of revelation and a flash of response. Like lightning. Like falling in love.

If it is indeed impossible - or at least very difficult - to inhabit the consciousness of an animal, then in writing about animals there is a temptation to project upon them feelings and thoughts that may belong only to our own human mind and heart.

And anyway, I suspect he secretly liked it when a woman was cold and distant

Perhaps; but I am a difficult person to live with. My difficulty consists in not wanting to live with other people.

I tend to resist invitations to interpret my own fiction.