Poetry is language in orbit.

It is difficult at times to repress the thought that history is about as instructive as an abattoir; that Tacitus was right and that peace is merely the desolation left behind after the decisive operations of merciless power.

The dotted line my father's ashplant made On Sandymount Strand Is something else the tide won't wash away.

Hope for a great sea-change timid to rebuke and too petty to forgive.

The end of art is peace.

I rhyme… to see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

I have begun to think of life as a series of ripples widening out from an original center.