I do not know if it has ever been noted before that one of the main characteristics of life is discreteness. Unless a film of flesh envelopes us, we die. Man exists only insofar as he is separated from his surroundings. The cranium is a space-traveler's helmet. Stay inside or you perish. Death is divestment, death is communion. It may be wonderful to mix with the landscape, but to do so is the end of the tender ego.

Look at this tangle of thorns.

Coordinating there Events and objects with remote events And vanished objects. Making ornaments Of accidents and possibilities.

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/By the false azure in the windowpane.

Discussion in class, which means letting twenty young blockheads and two cocky neurotics discuss something that neither their teacher nor they know.

I still dwelled deep in my elected paradise--a paradise whose skies were the color of hell-flames--but still a paradise.

Her lips were like large crimson polyps.