“life is first boredom, then fear.whether or not we use it, it goes,and leaves what something hidden from us chose,and age, and then the only end of age.”

“Everyone should be forcibly transplanted to another continent from their family at the age of three.”

“Men whose first coronary is coming like Christmas; who drift, loaded helplessly with commitments and obligations and necessary observances, into the darkening avenues of age and incapacity, deserted by everything that once made life sweet. These I have tried to remind of the excitement of jazz and tell where it may still be found.”

“Now, helpless in the hollow ofAn unarmorial age, a troughOf smoke in slow suspended skeinsAbove their scrap of history,Only an attitude remains:Time has transfigured them intoUntruth. The stone finalityThey hardly meant has come to beTheir final blazon, and to proveOur almost-instinct almost true:What will survive of us is love.”

“How hard it is, to be forced to the conclusion that people should be, nine tenths of the time, left alone! - When there is that in me that longs for absolute commitment. One of the poem-ideas I had was that one could respect only the people who knew that cups had to be washed up and put away after drinking, and knew that a Monday of work follows a Sunday in the water meadows, and that old age with its distorting-mirror memories follows youth and its raw pleasures, but that it's quite impossible to love such people, for what we want in love is release from our beliefs, not confirmation in them. That is where the 'courage of love' comes in - to have the courage to commit yourself to something you don't believe, because it is what - for the moment, anyway - thrills your by its audacity. (Some of the phrasing of this is odd, but it would make a good poem if it had any words...)”

“Loneliness clarifies. Here silence standsLike heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken, Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken, Luminously-peopled air ascends; And past the poppies bluish neutral distance Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence: Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.”

“What will survive of us is love.- from A Writer”