We’re only here for a short while. And I think it’s such a lucky accident, having been born, that we’re almost obliged to pay attention.

Poetry is something that happens in universities, in creative writing programs or in English departments.

Even this late it happens: the coming of love, the coming of light.

Poetry is, first and last, language - the rest is filler.

But I tend to think of the expressive part of me as rather tedious - never curious or responsive, but blind and self-serving.

And at least in poetry you should feel free to lie. That is, not to lie, but to imagine what you want, to follow the direction of the poem.

She stood beside me for years, or was it a moment? I cannot remember. Maybe I loved her, maybe I didn't. There was a house, and then no house. There were trees, but none remain. When no one remembers, what is there? You, whose moments are gone, who drift like smoke in the afterlife, tell me something, tell me anything.