“The purpose of poetry is to remind ushow difficult it is to remain just one person,for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors, and invisible guests come in and out at will.”

“The purpose of poetry is to remind us / how difficult it is to remain just one person...”

“Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year, I felt a door opening in me and I entered the clarity of early morning. One after another my former lives were departing, like ships, together with their sorrow. And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas assigned to my brush came closer, ready now to be described better than they were before.”

“I have defined poetry as a 'passionate pursuit of the Real.”

“What is poetry which does not save nations or people?”

“I was not meant to live anywhere except in Paradise.Such, simply, was my genetic inadaptation.Here on earth every prick of a rose-thorn changed into a wound. When the sun hid behind a cloud, I grieved.I pretended to work like others from morning to evening, but I was absent, dedicated to invisible countries.”

“The survivors ran through the fields, escapingFrom themselves, knowing they wouldn't returnFor a hundred years. Before them were spreadThose quicksands where a tree changes into nothing,Into an anti-tree, where no borderlineSeparates a shape from a shape, and where,Amid thunder, the golden house of isCollapses, and the word becoming ascends.”