We live in our own world , A world that is too small For you to stoop and enter Even on hands and knees, The adult subterfuge.

The deep spaces between stars , Fathomless as the cold shadow His mind cast.

Verse should be as natural As the small tuber that feeds on muck And grows slowly from obtuse soil To the white flower of immortal beauty

You cannot find the centre Where we dance , where we play, Where life is still asleep Under the closed flower , Under the smooth shell Of eggs in the cupped nest That mock the faded blue Of your remoter heaven .

The furies are at home in the mirror; it is their address. Even the clearest water, if deep enough can drown. Never think to surprise them. Your face approaching ever so friendly is the white flag they ignore. There is no truce with the furies. A mirror's temperature is always zero. It is ice in the veins. It's camera is an x-ray. It is a chalice held out to you in silent communion, where gaspingly you partake of a shifting identity never your own.

Natural, hell! What was it Chaucer Said once about the long toil that goes like blood to the poems making? Leave it to nature and the verse sprawls, Limp as bindweed, if it break at all Life's iron crust Man, you must sweat And rhyme your guts taut, if you'd build Your verse a ladder.

We live in our own world , A world that is too small For you to stoop and enter Even on hands and knees, The adult subterfuge.