“water needlesstitch up the splitshadow-he fights his waydeeper down, free.”

“Count up the almonds,Count what was bitter and kept you waking,Count me in too:I sought your eye when you glanced up and no one would see you,I spun that secret threadWhere the dew you mused onSlid down to pitchersTended by a word that reached no one’s heart.There you first fully entered the name that is yours, you stepped to yourself on steady feet,the hammers swung free in the belfry of your silence,things overheard thrust through to you,what’s dead put it’s arm around you too,and the three of you walked through the evening.Render me bitter.Number me among the almonds”

“Poetry is perhaps this: an Atemwende, a turning of our breath. Who knows, perhaps poetry goes its way—the way of art—for the sake of just such a turn? And since the strange, the abyss and Medusa’s head, the abyss and the automaton, all seem to lie in the same direction—is it perhaps this turn, this Atemwende, which can sort out the strange from the strange? It is perhaps here, in this one brief moment, that Medusa’s head shrivels and the automaton runs down? Perhaps, along with the I, estranged and freed here, in this manner, some other thing is also set free?”

“Spring: trees flying up to their birds”

“Autunm eats its leaf out of my hand: we are friends.From the nuts we shell time and we teach it to walk:then time returns to the shell.In the mirror it's Sunday,in dream there is room for sleeping,our mouths speak the truth.My eye moves down to the sex of my loved one:we look at each other,we exchange dark words,we love each other like poppy and recollection,we sleep like wine in the conches,like the sea in the moon's blood ray.We stand by the window embracing, and people look up fromthe street:it is time they knew!It is time the stone made an effort to flower,time unrest had a beating heart.It is time it were time.It is time.”

“Speak you too,speak as the last,say out your say.Speak-But don’t split off No from Yes.Give your say this meaning too:Give it the shadow.Give it shadow enough,Give it as muchAs you know is spread round you fromMidnight to midday and midnight.Look around:See how things all come alive-By death! Alive!Speaks true who speaks shadow.But now the place shrinks, where you stand:Where now, shadow-stripped, where?Climb. Grope upwards.Thinner you grow, less knowable, finer!Finer: a threadThe star wants to descend on:So as to swim down beliow, down hereWhere it sees itself shimmer:in the swellOf wandering words.”

“They are the efforts of someone who, overarced by stars that are human handiwork, and who, shelterless in this till now undreamt of sense and thus most uncannily in the open, goes with his very being into language, reality-wounded and reality-seeking.”