“In the 40,000 year time scale we're all the same people. We're all equally primitive, give or take two or three thousand years here or a hundred years there.”

“All those years and their moments—Crackling bacon, slamming car doors,Poems tried out on friends,Will be one more archive,One more shaky text.”

“Damn me not I make a better fool. And there is nothing vaster, more beautiful, remote, unthinking (eternal rose-red sunrise on the surf—great rectitude of rocks) than man, inhuman man, At whom I look for a thousand light years from a seat near Scorpio, amazed and touched by his concern and pity for my plight, a simple star, Then trading shapes again. My wife is gone, my girl is gone, my books are loaned, my clothes are worn, I gave away a car; and all that happened years ago. Mind & matter, love & space are frail as foam on beer.”

“Range after range of mountains.Year after year after year.I am still in love.”

“I thought I heard an axe chop in the woods It broke the dream; and woke up dreaming on a train. It must have been a thousand years ago In some old mountain sawmill of Japan. A horde of excess poets and unwed girls And I that night prowled Tokyo like a bear Tracking the human future Of intelligence and despair.”

“On Climbing the Sierra Mountains again after 31 yearsRange after range of mountainsYear after year after year.I am still in love.”

“I wanted a good place to settle:Cold Mountain would be safe.Light wind in a hidden pine -Listen close - the sound gets better.Under it a gray haired manMumbles along reading Huang and Lao.For ten years I havn't gone back homeI've even forgotten the way by which I came.”