“In ordinary life, a mentor can guide a young man through various disciplines, helping to bring him out of boyhood into manhood; and that in turn is associated not with body building, but with building and emotional body capable of containing more than one sort of ecstasy.”

“His large earsHear everythingA hermit wakesAnd sleeps in a hutUnderneathHis gaunt cheeks.His eyes blue, alert,Disappointed,And suspicious,Complain IDo not bring himThe same sort ofJokes the nursesDo. He is a birdWaiting to be fed,—Mostly beak— an eagleOr a vulture, orThe Pharoah's servantJust before death.My arm on the bedrailRests there, relaxed,With new love. AllI know of the TroubadoursI bring to this bed.I do not wantOr need to be shamed By him any longer.The general of shameHas dischargedHim, and left himIn this small provincialEgyptian town.If I do not wishTo shame him, thenWhy not love him?His long hands,Large, veined,Capable, can stillRetain hold of whatHe wanted. ButIs that what heDesireed? SomePowerful engineOf desire goes onTurning inside his body.He never phrasedWhat he desired,And I amhis son.”

“When a man says to a woman, "You are my anima," she should quickly scream and run out of the room. The word anima has neither the greatness of the Woman with Golden Hair nor the greatness of an ordinary woman, who wants to be loved as a woman.”

“Reclaiming the sacred in our lives naturally brings us close once more to the wellsprings of poetry.”

“THE FACE IN THE TOYOTASuppose you see a face in a ToyotaOne day, and you fall in love with that face,And it is Her, and the world rushes byLike dust blown down a Montana street.And you fall upward into some deep hole,And you can’t tell God from a grain of sand.And your life is changed, except that now youOverlook even more than you did before;And these ignored things come to bury you,And you are crushed, and your parentsCan’t help anymore, and the woman in the ToyotaBecomes a part of the world that you don’t see.And now the grain of sand becomes sand again,And you stand on some mountain road weeping.”

“IT IS SO EASY TO GIVE INI have been thinking about the man who gives in.Have you heard about him? In this storyA twenty-eight-foot pine meets a small windAnd the pine bends all the way over to the ground.I was persuaded,” the pine says. “It was convincing.”A mouse visits a cat, and the cat agreesTo drown all her children. “What could I do?”The cat said. “The mouse needed that.”It’s strange. I’ve heard that some people conspireIn their own ruin. A fool says, “You don’tDeserve to live.” The man says, “I’ll string this ropeOver that branch, maybe you can find a box.”The Great One with her necklace of skulls says,I need twenty thousand corpses.” “Tell you what,”The General says, “we have an extra battalionOver there on the hill. We don’t need all these men.”

“Early Morning in Your RoomIt's morning. The brown scoops of coffee, the wasp-likeCoffee grinder, the neighbors still asleep.The gray light as you pour gleaming water--It seems you've traveled years to get here.Finally you deserve a house. If not deserveIt, have it; no one can get you out. MiseryHad its way, poverty, no money at least.Or maybe it was confusion. But that's over.Now you have a room. Those lighthearted books:The Anatomy of Melancholy, Kafka's Letter to his Father, are all here. You can danceWith only one leg, and see the snowflake fallingWith only one eye. Even the blind manCan see. That's what they say. If you hadA sad childhood, so what? When Robert BurtonSaid he was melancholy, he meant he was home.”