What did you think, that joy / was some slight thing?

No such thing, the queen said, as too many sequins.

Into the paradise of euphony, the good poet must introduce hell. Broken paradises are the only kind worth reading.

Even sad stories are company. And perhaps that's why you might read such a chronicle, to look into a companionable darkness that isn't yours.

There are those fortunate hours when the world consents to be made into a poem.

The physical reinvention of the world is endless, relentless, fascinating, exhaustive; nothing that seems solid is. If you could stand at just a little distance in time, how fluid and shape-shifting physical reality would be, everything hurrying into some other form, even concrete, even stone.

We long to connect; we fear that if we do, our freedom and individuality will disappear.