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.

The yellow glistens. It glistens with various yellows, Citrons, oranges and greens Flowering over the skin.

I measure myself Against a tall tree I find that I am much taller, For I reach right up to the sun With my eye; And I reach to the shore of the sea With my ear. Nevertheless, I dislike The way the ants crawl In and out of my shadow.

Everything is complicated; if that were not so, life and poetry and everything else would be a bore.

It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place, It has to face the man of the time.

The poem must resist the intelligence almost successfully.

Life's nonsense pierces us with strange relation.