“There's in my mind a...turbulent moon-ridden girlor old woman, or both,dressed in opals and rags, feathersand torn taffeta,who knows strange songsbut she is not kind.”

“It's when we face for a moment the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know the taint in our own selves, that awe cracks the mind's shell and enters the heart.”

“Wear scarlet! Tear the green lemonsoff the tree! I don't wantto forget who I am, what has burned in me,and hang limp and clean, an empty dress -”

“The yellow moon dreamilytipping buttons of lightdown among the leaves. Marimba,marimba - from beyond theblack street.Somebody dancing,somebodygetting the helloutta here. Shadows of catsweave round the treetrunks,the exposed knotty roots.("Scenes from the Life of the Peppertrees")”

“The poem has a social effect of some kind whether or not the poet wills it to have. It has a kenetic force, it sets in motion...elements in the reader that would otherwise remain stagnant.”

“Fire he sang,that trees fear, and I, a tree, rejoiced in its flames.New buds broke forth from me though it was full summer. As though his lyre (now I knew its name) were both frost and fire, its chords flamedup to the crown of me. I was seed again. I was fern in the swamp. I was coal. ("A Tree Telling of Orpheus")”

“But for us the road unfurls itself, we don't stop walking, we know there is far to go. ”