“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.”

“I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.Inaction, no falsifying dreamBetween my hooked head and hooked feet:Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.The convenience of the high trees!The air's buoyancy and the sun's rayAre of advantage to me;And the earth's face upward for my inspection.My feet are locked upon the rough bark.It took the whole of CreationTo produce my foot, my each feather:Now I hold Creation in my footOr fly up, and revolve it all slowly -I kill where I please because it is all mine.There is no sophistry in my body:My manners are tearing off heads -The allotment of death.For the one path of my flight is directThrough the bones of the living.No arguments assert my right:The sun is behind me.Nothing has changed since I began.My eye has permitted no change.I am going to keep things like this.”

“The ShellThe sea fills my earwith sand and with fear.You may wash out the sand,but never the soundof the ghost of the seathat is haunting me.”

“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.”

“And if you don’t accept my challenge,” shouted the Iron Man, “then you’re a miserable cowardly reptile, not fit to bother with.”

“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.”

“where are the godsthe gods hate usthe gods have run awaythe gods have hidden in holesthe gods are dead of the plaguethey rot and stink toothere never were any godsthere’s only death”