Of course there is nothing the matter with the stars It is my emptiness among them While they drift farther away in the invisible morning

You grieve Not that heaven does not exist but That it exists without us

I wouldn't be happy about being considered a love poet or an environmental - I don't want any of those tags.

Of course there is nothing the matter with the stars It is my emptiness among them While they drift farther away in the invisible morning

In the time that I have been acquainted with this region I have become increasingly aware of it as a testament of water, the origin and guide of its contours and gradients and of all the lives - the plants and small creatures, and the culture - that evolved here. That was always here to be seen, of course, and the recognition has forced itself, in one form or other, upon people in every part of the world who have been directly involved with the growing of living things. The gardener who ignores it is soon left with no garden.

Poetry is a way of looking at the world for the first time.

It's an attitude of superiority. We are superior to the rest of life. The Book of Genesis says: 'Increase and multiply and have dominion over the birds of the air and the animals and so forth.' You run it; it's yours; do what you like with it. I don't know how old that text is, but it represents an attitude that probably really got going with the beginning of agriculture. Before that, the hunter-gatherers were gentler people than the agriculture.