“I lie in the dark wondering if this quiet in me nowis a beginning or an end.”

“The heart is a foreign country whose language none of us is good at.”

“The Poles rode out from Warsaw against the German Tanks on horses. Rode knowing, in sunlight, with sabers, A magnitude of beauty that allows me no peace. And yet this poem would lessen that day. Qu...”

“DuendeI can't remember her name.It's not as though I've been in bedwith that many women.The truth is I can't even rememberher face. I kind of know how strongher thighs were, and her beauty.But what...”

“Suddenly this defeat.This rain.The blues gone grayAnd the browns gone grayAnd yellowA terrible amber.In the cold streetsYour warm body.In whatever roomYour warm body.Among all the peopleYour absenc...”

“To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboatcomes slowly out and then goes back is truly worthall the years of sorrow that are to come.”

“We are looking for a tongue that speaks with reverence for life, searching for an ecology of mind. Without it, we have no home, no place of our own within the creation. It is not only the vocabular...”

“But Sasha was from Russia, where the sunsets are longer, the dawns less sudden and sentences are often left unfinished from doubt as how to best end them.”

“Why the Egyptian, Arabic, Abyssinian, Choctaw? Well, what tongue does the wind talk? What nationality is a storm? What country do rains come from? What color is lightning? Where does thunder goe wh...”