“Why can't one stop being a son without becoming a father?”

“The way the moon dashes through clouds that blowLoosely as cannon-smoke...Is a reminder of the strength and painOf being young; that it can't come again,But is for others undiminished somewhere.”

“Seriously, I think it is a grave fault in life that so much time is wasted in social matters, because it not only takes up time when you might be doing individual private things, but it prevents you storing up the psychic energy that can then be released to create art or whatever it is. It's terrible the way we scotch silence & solitude at every turn, quite suicidal. I can't see how to avoid it, without being very rich or very unpopular, & it does worry me, for time is slipping by , and nothing is done. It isn't as if anything was gained by this social frivolity, It isn't: it's just a waste.”

“What do they think has happened, the old fools,To make them like this ? Do they somehow supposeIt's more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and droolsAnd you keep on pissing yourself, and can't rememberWho called this morning ? Or that, if they only chose,They could alter things back to when they danced all night,Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September ?Or do they fancy there's really been no change, And they've always behaved as if they were crippled or tight,Or sat through days of thin continuous dreamingWatching light move ? If they don't (and they can't), it's strange:Why aren't they screaming ?At death, you break up: the bits that were youStart speeding away from each other for everWith no one to see. It's only oblivion, true: We had it before, but then it was going to end,And was all the time merging with a unique endeavourTo bring to bloom the million-petalled flowerOf being here. Next time you can't pretendThere'll be anything else. And these are the first signs:Not knowing how, not hearing who, the powerOf choosing gone. Their looks show that they're for it:Ash hair, toad hands, prune face dried into lines-How can they ignore it ?Perhaps being old is having lighted roomsInside your head, and people in them, acting.People you know, yet can't quite name; each loomsLike a deep loss restored, from known doors turning, Setting down a Iamp, smiling from a stair, extractingA known book from the shelves; or sometimes onlyThe rooms themselves, chairs and a fire burning,The blown bush at the window, or the sun' sFaint friendliness on the wall some lonelyRain-ceased midsummer evening. That is where they live:Not here and now, but where all happened once.This is why they giveAn air of baffled absence, trying to be thereYet being here. For the rooms grow farther, leavingIncompetent cold, the constant wear and tearOf taken breath, and them crouching belowExtinction' s alp, the old fools, never perceivingHow near it is. This must be what keeps them quiet.The peak that stays in view wherever we goFor them is rising ground. Can they never tellWhat is dragging them back, and how it will end ? Not at night?Not when the strangers come ? Never, throughoutThe whole hideous inverted childhood? Well,We shall find out.- The Old Fools”

“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.”

“Dear, I can't write, it's all a fantasy: a kind of circling obsession.”

“It becomes still more difficult to find Words at once true and kind, Or not untrue and not unkind.”