“The first step ... shall be to lose the way.”

“When a group of people get up from a table, the table doesn’tknow which way any of them will go.”

“Prose is walking; poetry is flying”

“Turn on the dream you livedthrough the unwavering gaze. It is as you thought: the living burn.In the floating days may you discover grace.”

“To me, poetry is somebody standing up, so to speak, and saying, with as little concealment as possible, what it is for him or her to be on earth at this moment”

“This happened to your father and to you, Galway-sick to stay, longingto come up against the ends of the earth, and climb over.”

“Second-hand gloves will become lovely again, their memories are what give them the need for other hands. And the desolation of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness carved out of such tiny beings as we are asks to be filled; the need for the new love is faithfulness to the old.”