We are reading the story of our lives As though we were in it As though we had written it.

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

I have been eating poetry.

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

I don't really think it will make much difference to me when I'm dead whether I'm read or not . . . just as whether I'm dead or not won't mean much to me when I'm dead.

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

No voice comes from outer space, from the folds of dust and carpets of wind to tell us that this is the way it was meant to happen, that if only we knew how long the ruins would last we would never complain.