Great Throughts Treasury

"A community is an alibi for the failure of individual love."

"A fresh spider-web billowing like a spinnaker across the open window and here he is the little master sailing by on a thread of milk wish me luck admiral I haven't finished anything in a long time."

"A heavy burden lifted from my soul, I heard that love was out of my control."

"A poem has a certain - a different time. For instance, a poem is a very private experience, and it doesn't have a driving tempo. In other words, you know, you can go back and forward; you can comeback; you can linger. You know, it's a completely different time reference."

"A man never got a woman back... not by begging on his knees."

"A rat is more alive than a turtle. A turtle is slow, cold, mechanical, nearly a toy, a shell with legs. Their deaths didn?t count. But a white rat is quick and warm in its envelope of skin."

"?If It Be Your Will? is really a prayer. And ?Hallelujah? has that feeling. A lot of them do. ?Dance Me to the End of Love.? ?Suzanne.? I love church music and synagogue music. Mosque music."

"A kite is a victim you are sure of. You love it because it pulls gentle enough to call you master, strong enough to call you fool; because it lives like a desperate trained falcon in the high sweet air, and you can always haul it down to tame it in your drawer. A kite is a fish you have already caught in a pool where no fish come, so you play him carefully and long, and hope he won't give up, or the wind die down. A kite is the last poem you've written so you give it to the wind, but you don't let it go until someone finds you something else to do. A kite is a contract of glory that must be made with the sun, so you make friends with the field the river and the wind, then you pray the whole cold night before, under the travelling cordless moon, to make you worthy and lyric and pure."

"A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love..."

"A scar is what occurs when the word becomes flesh."

"A scheme is not a vision and you never have been tempted by a demon or a god."

"A song, you know, you've got a tempo. You know, you've got something that is moving swiftly. You can't stop it, you know? And it's designed to move swiftly from, you know, mouth to mouth, heart to heart, where a poem really speaks to something that has no time and that is - it's a completely different perception."

"A woman watches her body uneasily, as though it were an unreliable ally in the battle for love."

"A sip of wine, a cigarette, and then it?s time to go. I tidied up the kitchenette; I tuned the old banjo. I?m wanted at the traffic-jam. They?re saving me a seat."

"Act the way you'd like to be and soon you'll be the way you act."

"A young nurse is standing close behind me wondering whether she is being drawn by my power or her charity."

"After a while ', Tamara fell asleep. It was to avoid this that he had spoken. Her sleep seemed a desertion. It always happened when he felt more awake. He was ready to make statements immortal."

"Although only one man may be receiving the favors of a woman, all men in her presence are warmed. That's the great Generosity of women and the great generosity of the Creator who worked it out is that there are no unilateral agreements on sexuality ."

"And clenching your fist for the ones like us who are oppressed by the figures of beauty, you fixed yourself, you said, Well never mind, we are ugly but we have the music."

"And here you are hurried, and here you are gone; and here is the love that it's all built upon."

"After a while, if you are sufficiently bored or unemployed, you may want to read it from cover to cover."

"Ah, you loved me as a loser, but now you're worried that I just might win. You know the way to stop me, but you don't have the discipline. How many nights I prayed for this, to let my work begin. First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin."

"Ah, grief makes us precise!"

"All busy in the sunlight the flecks did float and dance, and I was tumbled up with them in formless circumstance."

"All disparities in the world, the various wings of the paradox, the two sides of the problem, questions pluck the daisy, the conscientious shaped scissors, all polarities, things and their images and things that do not cast shadows and simply everyday a street explosions, this face and this one, a house and a toothache, explosions only have, on their behalf, different letters, my needle all through it , and myself, my greedy fantasies, all that has existed and exists today, we are part of a necklace incomprehensible beauty and senselessness."

"All the lousy little poets coming around trying to sound like Charles Manson."

"All men will be sailors then until the sea shall free them."

"And this is our time-keeper, with a passion for percussion."

"And most people have a woman in their heart, most men have a woman in their heart and most women have a man in their heart."

"And I had not much of a voice. I didn't play that great guitar either."

"And I'll dance with you in Vienna, I'll be wearing a river's disguise. The hyacinth wild on my shoulder my mouth on the dew of your thighs. And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook, with the photographs there and the moss. And I'll yield to the flood of your beauty, my cheap violin and my cross."

"And she shows you where to look among the garbage and the flowers. There are heroes in the seaweed, there are children in the morning, they are leaning out for love, and they will lean that way forever, while Suzanne holds the mirror."

"And if one is to express the great inevitable defeat that awaits us all, it must be done within the strict confines of dignity and beauty."

"And may my bronze name touch always her thousand fingers grow brighter with her weeping until I am fixed like a galaxy and memorized in her secret and fragile skies."

"And summoned now to deal with your invincible defeat. You live your life as if it's real."

"And sometimes when the night is slow the wretched and the meek we gather up our hearts and go a Thousand Kisses Deep."

"And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook, with the photographs there and the moths."

"And you kissed me shy as though I'd never been your lover."

"And what can I tell you, my brother, my killer, what can I possibly say? I guess that I miss you, I guess I forgive you, I'm glad you stood in my way"

"Any startling piece of work has a subversive element in it, a delicious element often. Subversion is only disagreeable when it manifests in political or social activity."

"At first first nothing will happen to us and later on it will happen to us again."

"And you want to travel blind, and you know that she will trust you, For you've touched her perfect body with your mind."

"As I grew older, I understood that instructions came with this voice. What were these instructions? The instructions were never to lament casually. And if one is to express the great inevitable defeat that awaits us all, it must be done within the strict confines of dignity and beauty."

"Anything I tell you is an alibi for something else. Then let's be quiet together."

"As a young man, Yeats spoke to me in a way I could understand. Shakespeare I couldn't understand, but Yeats I could. It was his subject matter and also I really admired the way he put his personal life on the line."

"As the mist leaves no scar on the dark green hill so my body leaves no scar on you and never will."

"As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armor themselves against wonder."

"Be with me in the phases of my work because my brain feels like it has been whipped and i yearn to make a small perfect thing which will live in your morning like curious static through a president's elegy or a nude hunchback acquiring a tan on the crowded oily beach."

"Avoid the flourish. Do not be afraid to be weak. Do not be ashamed to be tired. You look good when you?re tired. You look like you could go on forever. Now come into my arms. You are the image of my beauty."

"Before I can discard the verse, I have to write it? It?s just as hard to write a bad verse as a good verse. I can?t discard a verse before it is written because it is the writing of the verse that produces whatever delights or interests or facets that are going to catch the light. The cutting of the gem has to be finished before you can see whether it shines."