“The soul is silent. If it speaks at all it speaks in dreams.”

“The Red PoppyThe great thingis not havinga mind. Feelings:oh, I have those; theygovern me. I havea lord in heavencalled the sun, and openfor him, showing himthe fire of my own heart, firelike his presence.What could such glory beif not a heart? Oh my brothers and sisters,were you like me once, long ago,before you were human? Did youpermit yourselvesto open once, who would neveropen again? Because in truthI am speaking nowthe way you do. I speakbecause I am shattered.”

“Balm of the summer night, balm of the ordinary,imperial joy and sorrow of human existence,the dreamed as well as the lived—what could be dearer than this, given the closeness of death?”

“Lived to see you throwingMe aside. That foughtlike netted fish inside me. Saw you throbbingIn my syrups. Saw you sleep. And lived to seeThat all flushed downThe refuse. Done?It lives in me.You live in me. Malignant.Love, you ever want me, don’t.”

“As I saw it, all my mother's life, my father held her down, like lead strapped to her ankles.She wasbuoyant by nature;she wanted to travel,go to the theater, go to museums.What he wantedwas to lie on the couchwith the Timesover his face,so that death, when it came,wouldn't seem a significant change.”

“It seems to me that the desire to make art produces an ongoing experience of longing, a restlessness sometimes, but not inevitably, played out romantically, or sexually. Always there seems something ahead, the next poem or story, visible, at least, apprehensible, but unreachable. To perceive it at all is to be haunted by it; some sound, some tone, becomes a torment — the poem embodying that sound seems to exist somewhere already finished. It’s like a lighthouse, except that, as one swims towards it, it backs away.”

“Like a child, the earth's going to sleep,or so the story goes. But I'm not tired, it says.And the mother says, You may not be tired but I'm tired”