So This Is How You

Keep Some Room In Your Heart For The Unimaginable.

... To Write Well It Is Entirely Necessary To Read Widely And Deeply. Good Poems Are The Best Teachers.

When It's Over, I Want To Say: All My Life I Was A Bride Married To Amazement. I Was The Bridegroom, Taking The World Into My Arms. When It Is Over, I Don't Want To Wonder If I Have Made Of My Life Something Particular, And Real. I Don't Want To Find Myself Sighing And Frightened, Or Full Of Argument. I Don't Want To End Up Simply Having Visited This World.

It's Morning, And Again I Am That Lucky Person Who Is In It.

And It Is Exceedingly Short, His Galloping Life. Dogs Die So Soon. I Have My Stories Of That Grief, No Doubt Many Of You Do Also. It Is Almost A Failure Of Will, A Failure Of Love, To Let Them Grow Old-or So It Feels. We Would Do Anything To Keep Them With Us, And To Keep Them Young. The One Gift We Cannot Give.