Over every mountain there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley.

You must believe: a poem is a holy thing - a good poem, that is. The poem, even a short time after being written, seems no miracle; unwritten, it seems something beyond the capacity of the gods.

By daily dying, I have come to be.

I wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing.

Any fool can take a bad line out of a poem; it takes a real pro to throw out a good line.

So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying, An intolerable waiting, A longing for another place and time, Another condition.

I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing, In my veins, in my bones I feel it,- The small water seeping upward, The tight grains parting at last. When sprouts break out, Slippery as fish, I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath-wet.