I am not sure, once a poet has found out what has been written already, and how it was written - once, in short, he has learnt his trade - that he should bother with literature at all. Poetry is not like surgery, a technique that can be copied. Every operation the poet performs is unique, and need never be done again.

Here silence stands Like heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken, Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken, Luminously-peopled air ascends; And past the poppies bluish neutral distance Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence: Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.

I have no enemies. But my friends don't like me.

What will survive of us is love.

I'd like to think...that people in pubs would talk about my poems

Only in books the flat and final happens, Only in dreams we meet and interlock.

Poetry is an affair of sanity, of seeing things as they are.