Well: the day is a poem but too much Like one of Jeffers's, crusted with blood and barbaric omens Painful to excess, inhuman as a hawk's cry.

Cruelty is a part of nature, at least of human nature, but it is the one thing that seems unnatural to us.

This wild swan of a world is no hunter's game.

Death's a fierce meadowlark: but to die having made / Something more equal to the centuries / Than muscle and bone, is mostly to shed weakness.

Pleasure is the carrot dangled to lead the ass to market; or the precipice.

Hear the music, the thunder of the wings. Love the wild swan.

Poetry is not a civilizer, rather the reverse, for great poetry appeals to the most primitive instincts.