But even so, none of the news of these world-spasms entered me as terror.

I shall gain glory or die.

There is risk and truth to yourselves and the world before you.

Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for.

Whether it be a matter of personal relations within a marriage or political initiatives within a peace process, there is no sure-fire do-it-yourself kit.

Yet there are times when a deeper need enters, when we want the poem to be not only pleasurably right but compellingly wise, not only a surprising variation played upon the world, but a re-tuning of the world itself.

Memory has always been fundamental for me. In fact, remembering what I had forgotten is the way most of the poems get started.