“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.”

“Life seemed to him to be a narrow cage, and her iron bars were many and dense, and there was only one way out.”

“Day by day his sister grewPaler with the woundShe could not see or touch or feel, as I dressed itEach day with her blue Breton jacket.- from Life After Death”

“The first sorrow of autumn is the slow good-bye of the garden that stands so long in the evening—a brown poppy head, the stalk of a lily, and still cannot go.The second sorrow is the empty feet of a pheasant who hangs from a hook with his brothers. The woodland of gold is folded in feathers with its head in a bag.And the third sorrow is the slow good-bye of the sun who has gathered the birds and who gathers the minutes of evening, the golden and holy ground of the picture.The fourth sorrow is the pond gone black, ruined, and sunken the city of water—the beetle's palace, the catacombs of the dragonfly.And the fifth sorrow is the slow good-bye of the woodland that quietly breaks up its camp. One day it's gone. It has only left litter—firewood, tent poles.And the sixth sorrow is the fox's sorrow, the joy of the huntsman, the joy of the hounds, the hooves that pound; till earth closes her ear to the fox's prayer.And the seventh sorrow is the slow good-bye of the face with its wrinkles that looks through the window as the year packs up like a tatty fairground that came for the children.”

“Although Jillian had known what Grimm was before that moment, she was briefly immobilized by the sight of him. It was one thing to know that the man she loved was a Berserker-it was another thing entirely to behold it. He regarded her with such an inhuman expression that if she hadn't peered deep into his eyes, she might have seen nothing of Grimm at all. But there, deep in the flickering blue flames, she glimpsed such love that it rocked her soul. She smiled up at him through her tears.A wounded sound of disbelief escaped him.Jillian gave him the most dazzling smile she could muster and placed her fist to her heart. "And the daughter wed the lion king," she said clearly.An expression of incredulity crossed the warrior's face. His blue eyes widened and he stared at her in stunned silence."I love you, Gavrael McIllioch."When he smiled, his face blazed with love. He tossed his head back and shouted his joy to the sky.”

“One day God felt he ought to give his workshop a spring clean... It was amazing what ragged bits and pieces came from under his workbench as he swept. Beginnings of creatures, bits that looked useful but had seemed wrong, ideas he'd mislaid and forgotten... There was even a tiny lump of sun. He scratched his head. What could be done with all this rubbish?”

“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.”