When one's not writing poems - and I'm not at the moment - you wonder how you ever did it. It's like another country you can't reach.

What we have not has made us what we are. / ... / What we are not drives us to consummation.

A holiday gives one a chance to look backward and forward; to reset oneself by an inner compass.

Without anxiety life would have very little savor.

Solitude is my element, and the reason is that extreme awareness of other people... precludes awareness of one's self so that after a while the self no longer knows that it exists.

And one cold starry night / Whatever your belief / The phoenix will take flight / Over the seas of grief / To sing her thrilling song / To stars and waves and sky / For neither old nor young / The phoenix does not die.

each new poem is partly propelled by the formal energies of all the poems that have preceded it in the history of literature.