“As Henry Moore carvedor modelled his sculpture every day,he strove to surpass Donatello4. and failed, but woke the next morningelated for another try.”

“Ox Cart ManIn October of the year,he counts potatoes dug from the brown field,counting the seed, countingthe cellar's portion out,and bags the rest on the cart's floor.He packs wool sheared in April, honeyin combs, linen, leathertanned from deerhide,and vinegar in a barrelhoped by hand at the forge's fire.He walks by his ox's head, ten daysto Portsmouth Market, and sells potatoes,and the bag that carried potatoes,flaxseed, birch brooms, maple sugar, goosefeathers, yarn.When the cart is empty he sells the cart.When the cart is sold he sells the ox,harness and yoke, and walkshome, his pockets heavywith the year's coin for salt and taxes,and at home by fire's light in November coldstitches new harnessfor next year's ox in the barn,and carves the yoke, and saws planksbuilding the cart again.”

“To desire to write poems that endure-we undertake such a goal certain of two things: that in all likelihood we will fail, and if we succeed we will never know it”

“Safe SexIf he and she do not know each other, and feel confidentthey will not meet again; if he avoids affectionate words;if she has grown insensible skin under skin; if they desireonly the tribute of another’s cry; if they employ each otheras revenge on old lovers or families of entitlement and steel—then there will be no betrayals, no letters returned unread,no frenzy, no hurled words of permanent humiliation,no trembling days, no vomit at midnight, no repeatedapparition of a body floating face-down at the pond’s edge”

“[O]ver the years I travelled to another universe. However alert we are, however much we think we know what will happen, antiquity remains an unknown, unanticipated galaxy. It is alien, and old people are a separate form of life. They have green skin, with two heads that sprout antennae. They can be pleasant, they can be annoying--in the supermarket, these old ladies won't get out of my way--but most important they are permanently other. When we turn eighty, we understand that we are extraterrestrial. If we forget for a moment that we are old, we are reminded when we try to stand up, or when we encounter someone young, who appears to observe green skin, extra heads, and protuberances.”

“We made in those days tiny identical rooms inside our bodies which the men who uncover our graves will find in a thousand years shining and whole.”

“I want to sleep like the birdsthen wake to write you againwithout hope that you read me.”