You may do this, I tell you, it is permitted. Begin again the story of your life.

One breath taken completely; one poem, fully written, fully read - in such a moment, anything can happen.

If truth is the lure, humans are fishes.

In sorrow, pretend to be fearless. In happiness, tremble.

The nourishment of Cezanne's awkward apples is in the tenderness and alertness they awaken inside us.

I need more and more silence, it feels. Poems don't leap into my mind when I'm distracted, turned outward, with other people, listening to music.

The first poem in The Beauty holds a woman in Portugal in a wheelchair singing, with great power, a fado. I have never seen this or heard of it, the image simply arrived. But surely such a thing has happened. And it matters to me that it has, or could.