“I think it was Milosz, the Polish poet, who when he lay in a doorway and watched the bullets lifting the cobbles out of the street beside him realised that most poetry is not equipped for life in a world where people actually die. But some is.”

“That’s the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they’re suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That’s why the things that are worst to undergo are best to remember. But when that child gets buried away under their adaptive and protective shells—he becomes one of the walking dead, a monster. So when you realise you’ve gone a few weeks and haven’t felt that awful struggle of your childish self — struggling to lift itself out of its inadequacy and incompetence — you’ll know you’ve gone some weeks without meeting new challenge, and without growing, and that you’ve gone some weeks towards losing touch with yourself. The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn’t live boldly enough, that they didn’t invest enough heart, didn’t love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.”

“The inmost spirit of poetry, in other words, is at bottom, in every recorded case, the voice of pain – and the physical body, so to speak, of poetry, is the treatment by which the poet tries to reconcile that pain with the world.”

“Everybody tries to protect this vulnerable two three four five six seven eight year old inside, and to acquire skills and aptitudes for dealing with the situations that threaten to overwhelm it... Usually, that child is a wretchedly isolated undeveloped little being. It’s been protected by the efficient armour, it’s never participated in life, it’s never been exposed to living and to managing the person’s affairs, it’s never been given responsibility for taking the brunt. And it’s never properly lived. That’s how it is in almost everybody. And that little creature is sitting there, behind the armour, peering through the slits. And in its own self, it is still unprotected, incapable, inexperienced...And in fact, that child is the only real thing in them. It’s their humanity, their real individuality, the one that can’t understand why it was born and that knows it will have to die, in no matter how crowded a place, quite on its own. That’s the carrier of all the living qualities. It’s the centre of all the possible magic and revelation. What doesn’t come out of that creature isn’t worth having, or it’s worth having only as a tool—for that creature to use and turn to account and make meaningful...And so, wherever life takes it by surprise, and suddenly the artificial self of adaptations proves inadequate, and fails to ward off the invasion of raw experience, that inner self is thrown into the front line—unprepared, with all its childhood terrors round its ears. And yet that’s the moment it wants. That’s where it comes alive—even if only to be overwhelmed and bewildered and hurt. And that’s where it calls up its own resources—not artificial aids, picked up outside, but real inner resources, real biological ability to cope, and to turn to account, and to enjoy. That’s the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they’re suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That’s why the things that are worst to undergo are best to remember. But when that child gets buried away under their adaptive and protective shells—he becomes one of the walking dead, a monster. So when you realise you’ve gone a few weeks and haven’t felt that awful struggle of your childish self—struggling to lift itself out of its inadequacy and incompetence—you’ll know you’ve gone some weeks without meeting new challenge, and without growing, and that you’ve gone some weeks towards losing touch with yourself.”

“The world's decay where the wind's hands have passed, And my head, worn out with love, at rest In my hands, and my hands full of dust.”

“In a cage of wire-ribsThe size of a man’s head, the macaw bristles in a staringCombustion, suffers the stoking devils of his eyes.In the old lady’s parlour, where an aspidistra succumbsTo the musk of faded velvet, he hangs in clear flames,Like a torturer’s iron instrument preparingWith dense slow shudderings of greens, yellows, blues, Crimsoning into the barbs:Or like the smouldering head that hungIn Killdevil’s brass kitchen, in irons, who had beenVolcano swearing to vomit the world away in black ash,And would, one day; or a fugitive aristocratFrom some thunderous mythological hierarchy, caughtBy a little boy with a crust and a bent pin,Or snare of horsehair set for a song-thrush, And put in a cage to sing.The old lady who feeds him seedsHas a grand-daughter. The girl calls him ‘Poor Polly’, pokes fun.’Jolly Mop.’ But lies under every full moon,The spun glass of her body bared and so gleam-stillHer brimming eyes do not tremble or spillThe dream where the warrior comes, lightning and iron,Smashing and burning and rending towards her loin: Deep into her pillow her silence pleads.All day he stares at his furnaceWith eyes red-raw, but when she comes they close.’Polly. Pretty Poll’, she cajoles, and rocks him gently.She caresses, whispers kisses. The blue lids stay shut.She strikes the cage in a tantrum and swirls out:Instantly beak, wings, talons crashThe bars in conflagration and frenzy, And his shriek shakes the house.”

“Man's and woman's bodies lay without soulsDully gaping, foolishly staring, inertOn the flowers of Eden.God pondered.The problem was so great, it dragged him asleep.Crow laughed.He bit the Worm, God's only son,Into two writhing halves.He stuffed into man the tail halfWith the wounded end hanging out.He stuffed the head half headfirst into womanAnd it crept in deeper and upTo peer out through her eyesCalling it's tail-half to join up quickly, quicklyBecause O it was painful.Man awoke being dragged across the grass.Woman awoke to see him coming.Neither knew what had happened.God went on sleeping.Crow went on laughing.- A Childish Prank”