“After an age of leaves and feathers someone dead thought of the mountain as money and cut the trees that were here and the wind and the rain at night. It is hard to say it.”

“Utterance"Sitting over wordsVery late I have heard a kind of whispered sighingNot farLike a night wind in pines or like the sea in the darkThe echo of everything that has everBeen spokenStill spinning its one syllableBetween the earth and silence”

“The story of each stone leads back to a mountain.”

“come backbeliever in shadebeliever in silence and elegancebeliever in fernsbeliever in patiencebeliever in the rain”

“A BIRTHDAY Something continues and I don't know what to call itthough the language is full of suggestionsin the way of languagebut they are all anonymousand it's almost your birthday music next to my bonesthese nights we hear the horses running in the rainit stops and the moon comes out and we are still herethe leaks in the roof go on dripping after the rain has passedsmell of ginger flowers slips through the dark housedown near the sea the slow heart of the beacon flashesthe long way to you is still tied to me but it brought me to youI keep wanting to give you what is already yoursit is the morning of the mornings togetherbreath of summer oh my found onethe sleep in the same current and each waking to youwhen I open my eyes you are what I wanted to see.”

“with the night falling we are saying thank youwe are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railingswe are running out of the glass roomswith our mouths full of food to look at the skyand say thank youwe are standing by the water looking outin different directionsback from a series of hospitals back from a muggingafter funerals we are saying thank youafter the news of the deadwhether or not we knew them we are saying thank youin a culture up to its chin in shameliving in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank youover telephones we are saying thank youin doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevatorsremembering wars and the police at the back doorand the beatings on stairs we are saying thank youin the banks that use us we are saying thank youwith the crooks in office with the rich and fashionableunchanged we go on saying thank you thank youwith the animals dying around usour lost feelings we are saying thank youwith the forests falling faster than the minutesof our lives we are saying thank youwith the words going out like cells of a brainwith the cities growing over us like the earthwe are saying thank you faster and fasterwith nobody listening we are saying thank youwe are saying thank you and wavingdark though it is”

“We begin to say something that cannot be said. When you see on the front page a woman in Iraq who's just seen her husband blown up, you see her there, her mouth wide open, you know the sound coming out of her, a howl of grief and pain -- that's the beginning of language.Trying to express that, it's inexpressible, and poetry is really to say what can't be said. And that's why people turn to it in these moments. They don't know how to say this, [but] part of them feels that maybe a poem will say it. It won't say it, but it'll come closer to saying it than anything else will.I think there are always two sides, and one of them is the unsayable. The utterly singular. Who you are; who you can never tell anybody. And on the other hand, there is what you can express. How do we know about this thing we talk about? Because we talk about it. We're using words. And the words never say it, but the words are all we have to say it.”