“Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:The sun-comprehending glass,And beyond it, the deep blue air, that showsNothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.”

“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.”

“I'm terrified of the thought of time passing (or whatever is meant by that phrase) whether I 'do' anything or not. In a way I may believe, deep down, that doing nothing acts as a brake on 'time's - it doesn't of course. It merely adds the torment of having done nothing, when the time comes when it really doesn't matter if you've done anything or not.”

“Sexual intercourse began in nineteen sixty-three (Which was rather late for me) between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles' first LP.”

“Side by side, their faces blurred,The earl and countess lie in stone,Their proper habits vaguely shownAs jointed armour, stiffened pleat,And that faint hint of the absurd -The little dogs under their feet.Such plainness of the pre-BaroqueHardly involves the eye, untilIt meets his left-hand gauntlett, stillClasped empty in the other, andOne sees with a sharp tender shockHis hand withdrawn, holding her hand.They would not think to lie so long,Such faithfulness in effigyWas just a detail friends would see,A sculptor's sweet commissioned graceThrown off in helping to prolongThe Latin names around the base.They would not guess how early inTheir supine stationary voyageThe air would change to soundless damage,Turn the old tenantry away;How soon succeeding eyes beingTo look, not read. Rigidly, theyPersisted, linked, through lengths and breadthsOf time. Snow fell, undated. LightEach summer thronged the grass. A brightLitter of birdcalls strewed the sameBone-littered ground. And up the pathsThe endless altered people cameWashing at their identity.Now helpless in the hollowOf an unarmorial age, a troughOf smoke in slow suspended skeinsAbove their scrap of history,Only an attitude remains.Time has transfigured them intoUntruth. The stone fidelityThey hardly meant has come to beTheir final blazon and to proveOur almost-instinct almost-true:What will survive of us is love.- An Arundel Tomb”

“And I am sick for want of sleep;So sick, that I can half-believeThe soundless river pouring from the caveIs neither strong nor deep;Only an image fancied in conceit.”

“Love again: wanking at ten past three(Surely he's taken her home by now?), The bedroom hot as a bakery, The drink gone dead, without showing howTo meet tomorrow, and afterwards, And the usual pain, like dysentery.Someone else feeling her breasts and cunt, Someone else drowned in that lash-wide stare, And me supposed to be ignorant, Or find it funny, or not to care, Even ... but why put it into words?Isolate rather this elementThat spreads through other lives like a treeAnd sways them on in a sort of senseAnd say why it never worked for me.Something to do with violenceA long way back, and wrong rewards, And arrogant eternity.”