“I used to try and concentrate the poem so much that there wasn't a word that wasn't essential. This leads to becoming boring and constipated.”

“(Precocious children rarely grow up good). My aunts and uncles thought me quite atrocious. For using words more adult than I should”

“no poet can know what his poem is going to be like until he has written it.”

“In the eyes of others a man is a poet if he has written one good poem. In his own he is only a poet at the moment when he is making his last revision to a new poem. The moment before, he was still only a potential poet; the moment after, he is a man who has ceased to write poetry, perhaps forever.”

“Oh dear white children, casual as birds,Playing among the ruined languages,So small beside their large confusing words.”

“O dear white children casual as birds,Playing among the ruined languages,So small beside their large confusing words,So gay against the greater silencesOf dreadful things you did…”

“Far from his illnessThe wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;By mourning tonguesThe death of the poet was kept from his poems.”