“The pleasure we feel, reading a poem, is our assurance of its integrity.”

“I read poems for the pleasure of the mouth. My heart is in my mouth, and the sound of poetry is the way in." ~from an interview in Narrative magazine”

“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”

“We are all dyingof something, always,but our degrees ofawareness differ- from "Tubes”

“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.”

“The tree is burning on the autumn noonThat builds each year the leaf and bark again.Though frost will strip it raw and barren soon,The rounding season will restore and mend.Yet people are not mended, but go on,Accumulating memory and love.And so the wood we used to know is gone,Because the years have taught us that we move.We have moved on, the Tamburlaines of then,To different Asias of our plundering.And though we sorrow not to know againA land or face we loved, yet we are king.The young are never robbed of innocenceBut given gold of love and memory.We live in wealth whose bounds exceed our sense,And when we die are full of memory.-from "September Ode”

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