For poetry exists to break through to below the level of reason where the angels and monsters that the amenities keep in the cellar may come out to dance, to rove and roar, growling and singing, to bring life back to the enclosed rooms where too often we are only 'living and partly living.

Poetry has a way of teaching one what one needs to know ... if one is honest.

We are able to laugh when we achieve detachment, if only for a moment.

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

Gardening is the instrument of grace.

I tell the gods are still alive / And they are not consoling.

It always comes back to the same necessity: go deep enough and there is a bedrock of truth, however hard.