68 quotes
"Whose side are you on?" "I don't know."
"This is a war, you've got to choose." "I don't know."
"Does your village still exist?" "I don't know."
"Are those your children?" "Yes."
Poems New and Collected (1998)
On this third planet from the sun
among the signs of bestiality
a clear conscience is Number One.
Poems New and Collected (1998)
He feels like a handle broken off a jug,
but the jug doesn't know it's broken and keeps going to the well.
Poems New and Collected (1998)
Any knowledge that doesn't lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.
The Poet and the World (1996)
And how can we talk of order overall
when the very placement of the stars
leaves us doubting just what shines for whom?
Poems New and Collected (1998)
Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous "I don't know."
The Poet and the World (1996)
In Heraclitus' river
a fish has imagined the fish of all fish,
a fish kneels to the fish, a fish sings to the fish,
a fish begs the fish to ease its fishy lot.
Poems New and Collected (1998)
I'd have to be really quick
to describe clouds —
a split second's enough
for them to start being something else. Their trademark:
they don't repeat a single
shape, shade, pose, arrangement.
Poems New and Collected (1998)
God was finally going to believe
in a man both good and strong,
but good and strong
are still two different men.
Poems New and Collected (1998)
There's no life
that couldn't be immortal
if only for a moment.Death
always arrives by that very moment too late.In vain it tugs at the knob
of the invisible door.
As far as you've come can't be undone.
Poems New and Collected (1998)
It's shocking, the positions,
the unchecked simplicity with which
one mind contrives to fertilize another!
Such positions the Kama Sutra itself doesn't know.
Poems New and Collected (1998)
I remember it so clearly —
how people, seeing me, would break off in midword.
Laughter died.
Poems New and Collected (1998)
My dreams — even they're not as populous as they should be.
They hold more solitude than noisy crowds.
Poems New and Collected (1998)
Contemporary poets are skeptical and suspicious even, or perhaps especially, about themselves.
The Poet and the World (1996)
They aren't obliged to vanish when we're gone.
They don't have to be seen while sailing on.
Poems New and Collected (1998)
Secret codes resound.
Doubts and intentions come to light.
Poems New and Collected (1998)
I'm sorry that my voice was hard.
Look down on yourselves from the stars, I cried,
look down on yourselves from the stars.
They heard me and lowered their eyes.
Poems New and Collected (1998)
My choices are rejections, since there is no other way,
but what I reject is more numerous,
denser, more demanding than before.
A little poem, a sigh, at the cost of indescribable losses.
Poems New and Collected (1998)
I'm working on the world,
revised, improved edition,
featuring fun for fools
blues for brooders,
combs for bald pates,
tricks for old dogs.
Poems New and Collected (1998)
Gone, lost, scattered to the four winds. It still surprises me
how little now remains, one first person sing., temporarily
declined in human form, just now making such a fuss
about a blue umbrella left yesterday on a bus.
Poems New and Collected (1998)