Thom Gunn

“The snail pushes through a greennight, for the grass is heavywith water and meets overthe bright path he makes, where rain has darkened the earth's dark. Hemoves in a wood of desire,pale antlers barely stirringas he hunts. I cannot tellwhat power is at work, drenched therewith purpose, knowing nothing.What is a snail's fury? AllI think is that if laterI parted the blades abovethe tunnel and saw the thintrail of broken white acrosslitter, I would never haveimagined the slow passionto that deliberate progress.”

“Touch"You are alreadyasleep. I lowermyself in next toyou, my skin slightlynumb with the restraintof habits, the patina ofself, the black frostof outsideness, so that evenunclothed it isa resilient chillyhardness, a superficiallymalleable, deadrubbery texture.You are a moundof bedclothes, where the catin sleep bracesits paws against yourcalf through the blankets,and kneads each paw in turn.Meanwhile and slowlyI feel a is it my own warmth surfacing orthe ferment of your wholebody that in darkness beneaththe cover is stealingbit by bit to breakdown that chill.You turn andhold me tightly, doyou know whoI am or am Iyour mother orthe nearest human being tohold on to in a dreamed pogrom.What I, now loosened,sink into is an oldbig place, it isthere already, foryou are alreadythere, and the catgot there before you, yetit is hard to locate.What is more, the place isnot found but seepsfrom our touch incontinuous creation, darkenclosing cocoon roundourselves alone, darkwide realm where we walk with everyone.”

“Their relationship consistedIn discussing if it existed.”

“We control the content of our dreams.”

“As humans we look at things and think about what we've looked at. We treasure it in a kind of private art gallery.”

“Deep feeling doesn't make for good poetry. A way with language would be a bit of help.”