A poet needs to keep his wilderness alive inside him. To remain a poet after forty requires an awareness of your darkest Africa, that part of yourself that will never be tamed.

A longing for the dance stirs in the buried life.

In a murderous time/the heart breaks and breaks/and lives by breaking.

Poetry is the enemy of the poem.

We have all been expelled from the Garden, but the ones who suffer most in exile are those who are still permitted to dream of perfection.

The poem comes in the form of a blessing, like rapture breaking on the mind.

The ear writes my poems, not the mind.