“The noiseless wheels of my carrush with a crackling sound overdried leaves as I bow and pass smiling.”

“Outside, the north wind, coming and passing, swelling and dying, lifts the frozen sand drives it a-rattle against the lidless windows and we may dear sit stroking the cat stroking the cat and smiling sleepily, prrrr.”

“A poem is this:/A nuance of sound/delicately operating/upon a cataract of sense/...the particulars/of a song waking/upon a bed of sound.”

“The Last Words of My English GrandmotherThere were some dirty platesand a glass of milkbeside her on a small tablenear the rank, disheveled bed--Wrinkled and nearly blindshe lay and snoredrousing with anger in her tonesto cry for food,Gimme something to eat--They're starving me--I'm all right--I won't goto the hospital. No, no, noGive me something to eat!Let me take youto the hospital, I saidand after you are wellyou can do as you please.She smiled, Yesyou do what you please firstthen I can do what I please--Oh, oh, oh! she criedas the ambulance men liftedher to the stretcher--Is this what you callmaking me comfortable?By now her mind was clear--Oh you think you're smartyou young people,she said, but I'll tell youyou don't know anything.Then we started.On the waywe passed a long rowof elms. She looked at themawhile out ofthe ambulance window and said,What are all thosefuzzy looking things out there?Trees? Well, I'm tiredof them and rolled her head away.”

“Danse Russe If I when my wife is sleeping and the baby and Kathleen are sleeping and the sun is a flame-white disc in silken mists above shining trees,-- if I in my north room dance naked, grotesquely before my mirror waving my shirt round my head and singing softly to myself: "I am lonely, lonely. I was born to be lonely, I am best so!" If I admire my arms, my face, my shoulders, flanks, buttocks against the yellow drawn shades,-- Who shall say I am not the happy genius of my household?”

“You remember I had a strong inclination all my life to be a painter. Under different circumstances I would rather have been a painter than to bother with these god-damn words. I never actually thought of myself as a poet but I knew I had to be an artist in some way.”

“And yet one arrives somehow, finds himself loosening the hooks of her dress in a strange bedroom-- feels the autumn dropping its silk and linen leaves about her ankles. The tawdry veined body emerges twisted upon itself like a winter wind.”