All the great things have been denied and we live in an intricacy of new and local mythologies, political, economic, poetic, which are asserted with an ever-enlarging incoherence.

It is not everyday that the world arranges itself into a poem.

The leaves hop, scraping on the ground. It is deep January. The sky is hard. The stalks are firmly rooted in ice. It is in this solitude, a syllable, Out of these gawky flitterings, Intones its single emptiness, The savagest hollow of winter-sound.

It is the sea that whitens the roof. The sea drifts through the winter air. It is the sea that the north wind makes. The sea is in the falling snow.

At the sight of blackbirds Flying in a green light, Even the bawds of euphony Would cry out sharply.

Intolerance respecting other people's religion is toleration itself in comparison with intolerance respecting other people's art.

The poem must resist the intelligence almost successfully.