A man with a talent does what is expected of him, makes his way, constructs, is an engineer, a composer, a builder of bridges. It's the natural order of things that he construct objects outside himself and his family. The woman who does so is aberrant. We have to expiate for this cursed talent someone handed out to us, by mistake, in the black mystery of genetics.

About loving, I have little to learn from the young.

Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember nothing stays the same for long, not even pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.

over and over again I am struck by the wordiness of modern poetry, as if language had replaced experience and must be more and more extreme, intricate and in a way divorced from life itself. It seems as if what we all need is a great purification - but how will that come about?

Growing old is, of all things we experience, that which takes the most courage, and at a time when we have the least resources, especially with which to meet frustration.

It is dark now. The snow is deep blue and the ocean nearly black. It is time for some music.

In poetry compromise is fatal. In action of any cooperative sort it is inevitable. The thing is to find the balance.