“ANOTHER TWILIGHTAllow the point of the Croccodrillo its hazy cypress trees in profile Like a rough sketch for the Isle of the Dead, as seen from yellow stucco, his Villa Igea where Lawrence finished "Sons and Lovers," wild thyme scenting olive-grove grass, crime scenery come back to more than once.Again you're mirrored in lake shadow, a white sail flaking on its turquoise wavelets, keep awake by traffic noiseAlong the Gardesana...and you know that this beauty's unbearable as before even if seen from its opposite shore.”

“You haven't seen a tree until you've seen its shadow from the sky.”

“It's not platinum, which suggests constellations and redemption. It's another yellow entirely. Asthma yellow. It comes from rotting petals and camera flashes that permanently scar your face. It leaks from clusters of stucco that remind me of blisters and lumps you get on your lips from kissing the wrong people.”

“The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.”

“The spruce and cedar on its shores, hung with gray lichens, looked at a distance like the ghosts of trees. Ducks were sailing here and there on its surface, and a solitary loon, like a more living wave, — a vital spot on the lake's surface, — laughed and frolicked, and showed its straight leg, for our amusement.”

“The church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence even in a shadow than in the church.”