65 quotes
The wind sharpened itself on a rock;
A voice sang
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
Over the gulfs of dream
Flew a tremendous bird
Further and further away
Into a moonless black,
Deep in the brain, far back.
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
I'll seek my own meekness.
What grace I have is enough.
The lost have their own pace.
The stalks ask something else.
What the grave says,
The nest denies.
Praise to the End! (1951)
How can I rest in the days of my slowness?
I've become a strange piece of flesh,
Nervous and cold, bird-furtive, whiskery,
With a cheek soft as a hound's ear.
What's left is light as a seed;
I need an old crone's knowing.
Words for the Wind (1958)
Death was not. I lived in a simple drowse:
Hands and hair moved through a dream of wakening blossoms.
Rain sweetened the cave and the dove still called;
The flowers leaned on themselves, the flowers in hollows;
And love, love sang toward.
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
I saw the separateness of all things!
My heart lifted up with the great grasses;
The weeds believed me, and the nesting birds.
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
The Waking (1953)
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I’d have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek).
Who stunned the dirt into noise?
Ask the mole, he knows.
I feel the slime of a wet nest.
Beware Mother Mildew.
Nibble again, fish nerves.
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
There's an element of desperation in the insistence of the graduate student's respect for knowledge — as opposed to wisdom. (p. 95)
Poetry and Craft (1965)
Is pain a promise? I was schooled in pain,
And found out what I could of all desire;
I weep for what I'm like when I'm alone
In the deep center of the voice and fire. I know the motion of the deepest stone.
Each one's himself, yet each one's everyone.
Words for the Wind (1958)
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
The Waking (1953)
Fear was my father, Father Fear.
His look drained the stones.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
The Waking (1953)
In our age, if a boy or girl is untalented, the odds are in favor of their thinking they want to write. (p. 89)
Poetry and Craft (1965)
Poetry is not a mere shuffling of dead words or even a corralling of live ones. (p. 89)
Poetry and Craft (1965)
A terrible violence of creation,
A flash into the burning heart of the abominable;
Yet if we wait, unafraid, beyond the fearful instant,
The burning lake turns into a forest pool,
The fire subsides into rings of water,
A sunlit silence.
The Far Field (1964)
Like witches they flew along rows,
Keeping creation at ease;
With a tendril for needle
They sewed up the air with a stem;
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)
I always felt mean, jogging back over the logging road,
As if I had broken the natural order of things in that swampland;
Disturbed some rhythm, old and of vast importance,
By pulling off flesh from the living planet;
As if I had committed, against the whole scheme of life, a desecration.
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
The night wind rises. Does my father live?
Dark hangs upon the waters of the soul.
My flesh is breathing slower than a wall.
Love alters all. Unblood my instinct, love.
Words for the Wind (1958)