To Lucasta, Going to the Wars Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind, That from the nunnery Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind To war and arms I fly. True, a new mistress now...

True poetry is embarrassing.

Blankly expressing oneself can be stronger than words.

For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: ‘It might have been!

More than once I should have lost my soul to radicalism if it had been the originality it was mistaken for by its young converts.

All of my insecuritiesshine in the dark.

Blue SquillsHow many million Aprils cameBefore I ever knewHow white a cherry bough could be,A bed of squills, how blue!And many a dancing AprilWhen life is done with me,Will lift the blue flame of the...

In the great green room, there was a telephoneAnd a red balloonAnd a picture of a cat jumping over the moon…

A poet’s autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.

AnchorIt took twenty horses to lug methrough the shipyardon the back of a cartlike a fifteen-and-a-half tonpantomime dame.My spitting image was weighedon the other side of the bow:two fat men in drag; we felt as...

Sonnet 65Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea But sad mortality o’ersways their power, How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, Whose action is no stronger than a flower? O! how...

Symptoms of Love…The quickening of my heart I can hear my breath as it passes through my body like wind through branches of a tree.The sensation in my chest the dreams in my head my...

Wonder of time,’ quoth she, ‘this is my spite,That, thou being dead, the day should yet be light.’Since thou art dead, lo, here I prophesy:Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend:It shall be waited on with...

Believing in yourself is the best poetry.

Gardens are poemsWhere you stroll with your hands in your pockets.(Les jardins sont des poemes Ou l’on se promene les mains dans les poches.)

Watch me go. Watch me. Because you said i couldn’t. Because you thought I wouldn’t. Go on, cry now. Cry.

Sonnet IIf thee must say that I am not who I am,That I am not real or true,Then thou must say you are not as well,For we either walk in fairytales and dance to our...

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art–Not in lone splendour hung aloft the nightAnd watching, with eternal lids apart,Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite.

I do not write to you, but of you,/because the paper that we write on/is our perishable skin.

There is a difference between a poem and a writing incrusted with a feel of Poetry to fall within range

Every situation is of man’s making and can only contain what man contains.

Writing poetry is supernatural. Or, it should be.

Secretly, deep down, everybody on Earth believes they can write poetry, apart from the members of the Poets’ Guild, who know they can’t.

I – will have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love. Love above all.

Rainer Maria Rilke greeted and wrestled with the angels of his Duino Elegies in the solitude of a castle surrounded by white cliffs tall trees and the sea. I greeted most of mine in the...

I am the constellation of my own.

My wife with the hair of a wood fireWith the thoughts of heat lightningWith the waist of an hourglassWith the waist of an otter in the teeth of a tigerMy wife with the lips of...

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.But you are eternity and you are the mirror.

A poem was a box for your soul. That was the point. It was the place where you could save bits of yourself, and shake out your darkest feelings, without worrying that people would think...

Our two souls therefore, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to aery thinness beat. If they be two, they are two so As stiff...

I love you just the way you arebut you don’t see you like I do.You shouldn’t try so hard to be perfect.Trust me, perfect should try to be you.

The fear of poetry is an indication that we are cut off from our own reality.

… I slipped our wicker bed and walked the sands where we were also roughly repeated: some young couple, “you did,” “I didn’t,” “you sure the fuck did” – they huggedthat bicker to their chests...

She lends her pen,to thoughts of him,that flow from it,in her solitary.For she is his poet,And he is her poetry.

I sometimes think you despise poetry,’ said Phineas. ‘When it is false I do. The difficulty is to know when it is false and when it is true.

The Inner Self…What makes us who we areshould be glorifiedpersonifiedand sung unto the stars!

In writing I try to pare down the descriptive bits. If I feel that I could say something in as few words as possible, then I would rather do it than to go on padding....

…flames moved towards himand dropped within-singed and marred his tender skin …(the frightful plight tale)

That night we made love “the real way” which we had not yet attemptedalthough married six months.Big mystery. No one knew where to put their leg and to this day I’m not surewe got it...

You do not have to be good.You do not have to walk on your kneesfor a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it...

Had we but world enough, and time

The sweetness of dogs (fifteen) What do you say, Percy? I am thinkingof sitting out on the sand to watchthe moon rise. Full tonight.So we goand the moon rises, so beautiful it makes me shudder,...

If it chance your eye offends you,Pluck it out lad, and be sound:’Twill hurt, but here are salves to friend you,And many a balsam grows on ground.And if your hand or foot offend you,Cut it...

Writing is the light of imagination playing over shadow of thoughts.

Democracy! Bah! When I hear that I reach for my feather boa!

Today, find a point of stillness: brief, but precious slight, but full small, but luminously real. Find a point stillness in the balance of all things between the breathing out and breathing in.

One should always be drunk. That’s all that matters…But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you chose. But get drunk.

No one could say the stories were uselessfor as the tongue clackedfive or forty fingers stitchedcorn was grated from the huskpathwork was piecedor the darning was done…(from ‘The Storyteller Poems’)

Time to get drunk!Don’t be martyred slaves of Time,Get drunk!Stay drunk!On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!

At breakfast!’ said Louise in an awed voice. ‘A man who can read poetry at breakfast would be capable of anything.