They've healed me to pieces.

Illegibility of this world. All things twice over. The strong clocks justify the splitting hour, hoarsely. You , clamped into your deepest part, climb out of yourself for ever.

German poetry is going in a very different direction from French poetry.... Its language has become more sober, more factual. It distrusts "beauty." It tries to be truthful.

rush of pine scent (once upon a time), the unlicensed conviction there ought to be another way of saying this.

The language with which I make my poems has nothing to do with one spoken here, or anywhere.

Reality is not simply there, it does not simply exist: it must be sought out and won.

Poetry is perhaps this: an Atemwende, a turning of our breath. Who knows, perhaps poetry goes its way—the way of art—for the sake of just such a turn? And since the strange, the abyss and Medusa’s head, the abyss and the automaton, all seem to lie in the same direction—is it perhaps this turn, this Atemwende, which can sort out the strange from the strange? It is perhaps here, in this one brief moment, that Medusa’s head shrivels and the automaton runs down? Perhaps, along with the I, estranged and freed here, in this manner, some other thing is also set free?