If every head of state and every government official spent an hour a day reading poetry we'd live in a much more humane and decent world.

These wrinkles are nothing These gray hairs are nothing, This stomach which sags with old food, these bruised and swollen ankles, my darkening brain, they are nothing. I am the same boy my mother used to kiss.

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry.

And what does it matter when light enters the room where a child sleeps and the waking mother, opening her eyes, wishes more than anything to be unwakened by what she cannot name?

Usually a life turned into a poem is misrepresented.

I feel that anything is possible in a poem.

And yet, in a culture like ours, which is given to material comforts, and addicted to forms of entertainment that offer immediate gratification, it is surprising that so much poetry is written.