54 quotes
I am a man now.
Pass your hand over my brow.
You can feel the place where the brains grow.
Tares (1961)
It was not
I who lived, but life rather
that lived me.
Frequencies (1978)
All right, I was Welsh. Does it matter?
Tares (1961)
In the silence
that is his chosen medium
of communication and telling
others about it
in words. Is there no way
not to be the sport
of reason?
Between Here and Now (1981)
There is blood in my veins
That has run clear of the stain
Contracted in so many loins.
Tares (1961)
Sometimes a strange light
shines, purer than the moon,
casting no shadow, that is
the halo upon the bones
of the pioneers who died for truth.
Frequencies (1978)
Was he balked by silence? He kneeled long,
And saw love in a dark crown
Of thorns blazing, and a winter tree
Golden with fruit of a man's body.
Song at the Year's Turning (1955)
Yet men sought us despite this.
Tares (1961)
Blessings, Stevens;
I stand with my back to grammar
At an altar you never aspired
to, celebrating the sacrament
of the imagination whose high-priest
notwithstanding you are.
No Truce with the Furies (1995)
Any form of orthodoxy is just not part of a poet's province … A poet must be able to claim … freedom to follow the vision of poetry, the imaginative vision of poetry … And in any case, poetry is religion, religion is poetry.
A slow singer, but loading each phrase
With history’s overtones, love, joy
And grief learned by his dark tribe
In other orchards and passed on
Instinctively as they are now,
But fresh always with new tears.
Poetry For Supper (1958)
They left no books,
Memorial to their lonely thought
In grey parishes: rather they wrote
On men's hearts and in the minds
Of young children sublime words
Too soon forgotten. God in his time
Or out of time will correct this.
Poetry For Supper (1958)
There was a larger pattern
we worked at: they on a big
loom, I with a small needle.
Frequencies (1978)
Ah, what balance is needed at
the edges of such an abyss.
I am left alone on the surface
of a turning planet. What to do but, like Michelangelo’s
Adam, put my hand
out into unknown space,
hoping for the reciprocating touch?
Between Here and Now (1981)
somewhere within sight
of the tree of poetry
that is eternity wearing
the green leaves of time.
Why are my hands this way
That they will not do as i say?
Does no God hear when I pray?
Tares (1961)
Let despair be known
as my ebb-tide; but let prayer
have its springs, too, brimming,
disarming him; discovering somewhere
among his fissures deposits of mercy
where trust may take root and grow.
We live in our own world,
A world that is too small
For you to stoop and enter
Even on hands and knees,
The adult subterfuge.
Song at the Year's Turning (1955)
You cannot find the centre
Where we dance, where we play,
Where life is still asleep
Under the closed flower,
Under the smooth shell
Of eggs in the cupped nest
That mock the faded blue
Of your remoter heaven.
Song at the Year's Turning (1955)
"Sunlight's a thing that needs a window
Before it enter a dark room.
Windows don't happen."
So two old poets,
Hunched at their beer in the low haze
Of an inn parlour, while the talk ran
Noisily by them, glib with prose.
Poetry For Supper (1958)