I've often said that all poetry is political. This is because real poems deal with a human response to reality and politics is part of reality, history in the making. Even if a poet writes about sitting in a glass house drinking tea, it reflects politics.

The world of religion isn't a logical world; that's why children like it. It's a world of worked-out fantasies, very similar to children's stories or fairy tales.

Jerusalem is a port city on the shore of eternity.

What are you going to do now? You'll collect loves like stamps. You've got doubles and no one will trade with you. And you've got damaged ones.

Love is like a reservoir of kindness and pleasure, like silos and pools during a siege.

Even if a poet writes about sitting in a glass house drinking tea, it reflects politics.

And I said to myself: That's true, hope needs to be like barbed wire to keep out despair, hope must be a mine field.