I always felt I was scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to get a song together.

GIFT You tell me that silence is nearer to peace than poems but if for my gift I brought you silence (for I know silence) you would say This is not silence this is another poem and you would hand it back to me

I want history to jump on Canada's spine with sharp skates.

No one masters the heart.

So the great affair is over but whoever would have guessed, It would leave us all so vacant and so deeply unimpressed, It's like our visit to the moon or to that other star, I guess you go for nothing if you really want to go that far.

I almost went to bed without remembering the four white violets I put in the button-hole of your green sweater and how i kissed you then and you kissed me shy as though I’d never been your lover

There's a deep tribal aspect to my own nature. So when I'm in contact with those deep resources, of course I feel a very special kind of nourishment.