The One Who Travels Like

Talk—half-talk, Phrases That Had No Need To Be Finished, Abstractions, Chinese Bells Played On With Cotton-tipped Sticks, Mock Orange Blossoms Painted On Porcelain. The Muffled, Close, Half-talk Of Soft-fleshed Women. The Men She Had Embraced, And The Women, All Washing Against The Resonance Of My Memory. Sound Within Sound, Scene Within Scene, Woman Within Woman—like Acid Revealing An Invisible Script. One Woman Within Another Eternally, In A Far-reaching Procession, Shattering My Mind Into Fragments, Into Quarter Tones Which No Orchestral Baton Can Ever Make Whole Again.

The Final Lesson A Writer Learns Is That Everything Can Nourish The Writer. The Dictionary, A New Word, A Voyage, An Encounter, A Talk On The Street, A Book, A Phrase Learned.

Poetry Is The Alchemy Which Teaches Us To Convert Ordinary Materials Into Gold.

The Complaints Of The Child In Us Will Never Cease Lamenting Until It Is Consoled, Answered, Understood. Only Then Will It Lie Still In Us, Like Our Fears. It Will Die In Peace And Leave Us What The Child Leaves To The Man - The Sense Of Wonder.

I Am A Winged Creature Who Is Too Rarely Allowed To Use Its Wings. Ecstasies Do Not Occur Often Enough.