“All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged, fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find.”

“It snowed last year too: I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea.”

“One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.”

“Clown in the Moon"My tears are like the quiet driftOf petals from some magic rose;And all my grief flows from the riftOf unremembered skies and snows.I think, that if I touched the earth,It would crumble;It is so sad and beautiful,So tremulously like a dream.”

“The only sea I saw Was the seesaw sea With you riding on it. Lie down, lie easy. Let me shipwreck in your thighs.”

“I sang in my chains like the sea”

“Time held me green and dyingThough I sang in my chains like the sea.”