65 quotes
The poem, even a short time after being written, seems no miracle; unwritten, it seems something beyond the capacity of the gods.
Poetry and Craft (1965)
You must believe: a poem is a holy thing — a good poem, that is.
Poetry and Craft (1965)
They teased out the seed that the cold kept asleep, —
All the coils, loops and whorls.
They trellised the sun; they plotted for more than themselves.
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways.)
Words for the Wind (1958)
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
Words for the Wind (1958)
Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
You can't make poetry simply by avoiding clichés.
Poetry and Craft (1965)
Beginnings start without shade,
Thinner than minnows.
The live grass whirls with the sun,
Feet run over the simple stones,
There's time enough.
Behold, in the lout's eye, love.
Praise to the End! (1951)
Mother of quartz, your words writhe into my ear.
Renew the light, lewd whisper.
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
The Waking (1953)
And I dance with William Blake
For love, for Love's sake; And everything comes to One,
As we dance on, dance on, dance on.
The Far Field (1964)
This urge, wrestle, resurrection of dry sticks,
Cut stems struggling to put down feet,
What saint strained so much,
Rose on such lopped limbs to a new life?
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Words for the Wind (1958)
Dante attained the purgatorial hill,
Trembled at hidden virtue without flaw,
Shook with a mighty power beyond his will, —
Did Beatrice deny what Dante saw?
All lovers live by longing, and endure:
Summon a vision and declare it pure.
The Waking (1953)
The moon draws back its waters from the shore.
By the lake's edge, I see a silver swan,
And she is what I would. In this light air,
Lost opposites bend down —
Sing of that nothing of which all is made,
Or listen into silence, like a god.
Words for the Wind (1958)
Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire;
What burns me now? Desire, desire, desire.
The Far Field (1964)
My truths are all foreknown,
This anguish self-revealed.
I’m naked to the bone,
With nakedness my shield.
Open House (1941)
Too much reality can be a dazzle, a surfeit;
Too close immediacy an exhaustion
The Far Field (1964)
Goodbye, goodbye, old stones, the time-order is going,
I have married my hands to perpetual agitation,
I run, I run to the whistle of money.
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)