It is clear that we do not exactly choose our poems; our poems choose us.
For me a true poem is on the way when I begin to be haunted, when it seems as if I were being asked an inescapable question by an angel with whom I must wrestle to get at the answer.
I suppose real old age begins when one looks backward rather than forward
People who cannot feel punish those who do.
When it comes to the important things one is always alone.
An old body when it is loved becomes a sacred treasure; and sex itself must always, it seems to me, come to us as a sacrament and be so used or it is meaningless. The flesh is suffused by the spirit, and it is forgetting this in the act of love-making that creates cynicism and despair.