Although I know it's unfair, I reveal myself one mask at a time.

There are always the simple events of your life that you might try to convert into legend.

Bring to me, it said, continual proof / you've been alive.

Altruism is for those who can't endure their desires. There's a world as ambiguous as a moan, a pleasure moan our earnest neighbors might think a crime. It's where we could live. I'll say I love you, Which will lead, of course, to disappointment, but those words unsaid poison every next moment. I will try to disappoint you better than anyone else has. --Mon Semblable

Poetry does so many different things, it's difficult to say anything definitive about its role, which of course varies from culture to culture. It can range from being stories of the tribe to the private lyric, to being as W.H. Auden said "the clear expression of mixed feelings" to nonsense verse.

Now and again I feel the astonishment of being alive like this, in this body.

A true inner world is often revealed by style and sensibility as much as by what appears to be confession.