“There are two versions to every poem – the crying version and the straight version”

“RaptureI can feel she has got out of bed.That means it is seven a.m.I have been lying with eyes shut,thinking, or possibly dreaming,of how she might look if, at breakfast,I spoke about the hidden place in herwhich, to me, is like a soprano’s tremolo,and right then, over toast and bramble jelly,if such things are possible, she came.I imagine she would show it while trying to conceal it.I imagine her hair would fall about her faceand she would become apparently downcast,as she does at a concert when she is moved.The hypnopompic play passes, and I open my eyesand there she is, next to the bed,bending to a low drawer, picking overvarious small smooth black, white,and pink items of underwear. She bendsso low her back runs parallel to the earth,but there is no sway in it, there is little burden, the day has hardly begun.The two mounds of muscles for walking, leaping, lovemaking,lift toward the east—what can I say?Simile is useless; there is nothing like them on earth.Her breasts fall full; the nipplesare deep pink in the glare shining up through the iron barsof the gate under the earth where those who could not lovepress, wanting to be born again.I reach out and take her wristand she falls back into bed and at once starts unbuttoning my pajamas.Later, when I open my eyes, there she is again,rummaging in the same low drawer.The clock shows eight. Hmmm.With huge, silent effort of great,mounded muscles the earth has been turning.She takes a piece of silken clothfrom the drawer and stands up. Under the fallsof hair her face has become quiet and downcast,as if she will be, all day among strangers,looking down inside herself at our rapture.”

“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.”