Once A Happy Old Man One Can

It Is Because Everything Is Relative That We Shall Never See In That Sphere Of Pure Wisdom And Entertainment Much More Than Groping Shadows Of An Incomplete Former Existence So Close It Burns Like The Mouth That Closes Down Over All Your Effort Like The Moment Of Death

The Poem Is Sad Because It Wants To Be Yours, And Cannot Be.

One Listens To A Piece Of Great Music, Say, And Feels Deeply Moved By It, And Wants To Put This Feeling Into Words, But It Can't Be Put Into Words. That's What - The Music Has Already Supplied The Meaning, And Words Will Just Be Superfluous After That. But It's That Kind Of Verbal Meaning That Can't Be Verbalized That I Try To Get At In Poetry.

What I Like About Music Is Its Ability To Be Convincing, To Carry An Argument Through Successfully To The Finish, Though The Terms Of The Argument Remain Unknown Quantities.

Poetry Comes To Me Out Of Thin Air Or Out Of My Unconscious Mind. It's Sort Of The Way Dreams Come To Us And The Way That We Get Knowledge From Them, Through Television, Old Movies, Which I Watch A Lot Of. Lines Of Dialogue Suddenly Seem To Be Part Of A Poem.