Great Throughts Treasury

"Garages, barns and attics are always older than the buildings to which they are attached."

"Get ready for the future: it is murder."

"Gift: You tell me that silence is nearer to peace than poems but if for my gift I brought you silence (for I know silence) you would say this is not silence, this is another poem and you would hand it back to me."

"G-d is alive. Magic is afoot. G-d is afoot. Magic is alive."

"God is alive. Magic is afoot. God is alive. Magic is afoot. God is afoot. Magic is alive. Alive is afoot. Magic never died. God never sickened. Many poor men lied. Many sick men lied. Magic never weakened. Magic never hid. Magic always ruled. God is afoot. God was ruler though his funeral lengthened. Though his mourners thickened Magic never fled."

"Hallelujah Your faith was strong but you needed proof. You saw her bathing on the roof. Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you. She tied you to a kitchen chair, she broke your throne, and she cut your hair. And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah."

"Going nowhere? isn?t about turning your back on the world; it?s about stepping away now and then so that you can see the world more clearly and love it more deeply."

"Give Me Back My Fingerprints: Give me back my fingerprints, my fingertips are raw. If I don't get my fingerprints I'll have to call the law. I touched you once too often. I don't know who I am. My fingerprints were missing When I wiped away the jam. I called my fingerprints all night but they don't seem to care. The last time that I saw them they were leafing through your hair. I thought I'd leave this morning so I emptied out your drawer. A hundred thousand fingerprints floated to the floor. You hardly stooped to pick them up, you don't count what you lose. You don't even seem to know whose fingerprints are whose. When I had to say goodbye you weren't there to find. You took my fingerprints away so I would love your mind. I don't pretend to understand just what you mean by that, but next time I'll inquire before I scratch your back. I wonder if my fingerprints get lonely in the crowd. There are no others like them and that should make them proud. But now you want to marry me and take me down the aisle and throw confetti fingerprints you know that's not my style. Sure I'd like to marry but I won't face the dawn with any girl who knew me when my fingerprints were on."

"Growing old becomes clear to you at a certain point. I think it's after the age of 70 you realize - you begin to actually be convinced - you're growing older."

"He hated the men floating in sleep in the big stone houses. Because their lives were ordered and their rooms tidy. Because they got up every morning and did their public work. Because they weren't going to dynamite their factories and have naked parties in the fire."

"He knew that hair couldn't feel; he kissed her hair."

"He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love."

"He never described himself as a poet or his work as poetry. The fact that the lines do not come to the edge of the page is no guarantee. Poetry is a verdict, not an occupation. He hated to argue about the techniques of verse. The poem is a dirty, bloody, burning thing that has to be grabbed first with bare hands. Once the fire celebrated Light, the dirt Humility, the blood Sacrifice. Now the poets are professional fire-eaters, freelancing at any carnival. The fire goes down easily and honors no one in particular."

"Her hand was resting on his arm like snow on a leaf, ready to slip away when he moved."

"He was beautiful when he sat alone, he was like me, he had wide lapels, he was holding the mug in the hardest possible way so that his fingers were all twisted but still long and beautiful, he didn?t like to sit alone all the time, but this time, I swear, he didn?t care on way or the other. I?ll tell you why I like to sit alone, because I?m a sadist, that?s why we like to sit alone, because we?re the sadists who like to sit alone. He sat alone because he was beautifully dressed for the occasion and because he was not a civilian. We are the sadists you don?t have to worry about, you think, and we have no opinion on the matter of whether you have to worry about us, and we don?t even like to think about the matter because it baffles us. Maybe he doesn?t mean a thing to me anymore but I think he was like me. You didn?t expect to fall in love, I said to myself and at the same time I answered gently, Do you think so? I heard you humming beautifully, your hum said that I can?t ignore you, that I?d finally come around for a number of delicious reasons that only you knew about, and here I am, Miss Blood. And you won?t come back, you won?t come back to where you left me, and that?s why you keep my number, so you don?t dial it by mistake when you?re fooling with the dial not even dialing numbers. You begin to bore us with your pain and we have decided to change your pain. You said you were happiest when you danced, you said you were happiest when you danced with me, now which do you mean? And so we changed his pain, we threw the idea of a body at him and we told him a joke, and then he thought a great deal about laughing and about the code. And he thought that she thought that he thought that she thought the worst thing a woman could do was to take a man away from his work because that made her what, ugly or beautiful? And now you?ve entered the mathematical section of your soul which you claimed you never had. I suppose that this, plus the broken heart, makes you believe that now you have a perfect right to go out and tame the sadists. He had the last line of each verse of the song but he didn?t have any of the other lines, the last line was always the same, Don?t call yourself a secret unless you mean to keep it. He thought he knew, or he actually did know too much about singing to be a singer; and if there is actually such a condition, is anybody in it, and are sadists born there? It is not a question mark, it is not an exclamation point, it is a full stop by the man who wrote Parasites of Heaven. Even if we stated our case very clearly and all those who held as we do came to our side, all of them, we would still be very few."

"he talks like this you don't know what he's after."

"Here is your cross, your nails and your hill; and here is your love, that lists where it will."

"Here I stand, I'm your man."

"Here's to the few who forgive what you do, and the fewer who don't even care."

"History is a needle for putting men asleep anointed with the poison of all they want to keep."

"His vision was just outstanding. If you think of him in the same way as Pele then you would come close."

"How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me?"

"His knowledge of ancient Greece was based entirely on a poem Edgar Allan Poe, a few homosexual encounters with restaurateurs (he ate free at almost every soda fountain in the city), and a plaster reproduction of the Acropolis which, for some reason, he had coated with red nail polish."

"How bitter were the Prozac pills of the last few hundred mornings."

"How may we be saints and live in golden coffins who will leave on our stone shelves pathetic notes for intervention? How may we be calm marble gods at ocean altars who will murder us for some high reason."

"I always considered myself a minor writer. My province is small, and I try to explore it very, very thoroughly."

"How quickly pettiness returns, and that most ignoble form of real estate, the possessive occupation and tyranny over two square inches of human flesh, the wife's cunt."

"I ache in the places where I used to play."

"I almost went to bed without remembering the four white violets I put in the button-hole of your green sweater and how i kissed you then and you kissed me shy as though I?d never been your lover"

"I always loved those little creatures [hummingbird], always feel blessed when they appear nearby. There's a magical quality to them. I finally put one in a song."

"I always thought that poetry is the verdict that others give to a certain kind of writing. So to call yourself a poet is a kind of dangerous description. It's for others; it's for others to use."

"I always thought of myself as a competent, minor poet. I know who I'm up against."

"I always had a sense of being in this for keeps, if your health lasts you. And you?re fortunate enough to have the days at your disposal so you can keep on doing this. I never had the sense that there was an end. That there was a retirement or that there was a jackpot."

"I always felt I was scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to get a song together."

"I am locked in a very expensive suit old elegant and enduring. Only my hair has been able to get free but someone has been leaving their dandruff in it. Now I will tell you all there is to know about optimism Each day in hub cap mirror in soup reflection in other people's spectacles I check my hair for an army of alpinists for Indian rope trick masters for tangled aviators for dove and albatross for insect suicides for abominable snowmen I check my hair for aerialists of every kind. Dedicated as an automatic elevator I comb my hair for possibilities I stick my neck out I lean illegally from locomotive windows and only for the barber do I wear a hat."

"I am an old scholar, better-looking now than when I was young. That's what sitting on your ass does to your face."

"I am so often accused of gloominess and melancholy. And I think I'm probably the most cheerful man around. I don't consider myself a pessimist at all. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel completely soaked to the skin. ? I think those descriptions of me are quite inappropriate to the gravity of the predicament that faces us all. I've always been free from hope. It's never been one of my great solaces. I feel that more and more we're invited to make ourselves strong and cheerful... I think that it was Ben Jonson who said, I have studied all the theologies and all the philosophies, but cheerfulness keeps breaking through."

"I can work on a verse for a very long time before realizing it's not any good and then, and only then, can I discard it."

"I am running through a snowfall which is her thighs, he dramatized in purple. Her thighs are filling up the street. Wide as a snowfall, heavy as huge falling Zeppelins, her damp thighs are settling on the sharp roofs and wooden balconies. Weather-vanes press the shape of roosters and sail-boats into the skin. The faces of famous statues are preserved like intaglios...."

"I am not the one who loved, it's love that chooses me. When hatred with it's package comes, you forbid delivery."

"I can't run no more with that lawless crowd while the killers in high places say their prayers out loud. But they've summoned, they've summoned up a thundercloud and they're going to hear from me. Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack in everything That's how the light gets in."

"I can't make the hills. The system is shot. I'm living on pills for which I thank G-d. I followed the course from chaos to art. Desire the horse, depression the cart. I sailed like a swan, I sank like a rock. But time is long gone past my laughing stock. My page was too white, my ink was too thin. The day wouldn't write what the night penciled in. My animal howls. My angel's upset. But I'm not allowed a trace of regret. For someone will use what I couldn't be. My heart will be hers impersonally. She'll step on the path. She'll see what I mean. My will cut in half and freedom between. For less than a second our lives will collide. The endless suspended, the door open wide. Then she will be born to someone like you. What no one has done she'll continue to do. I know she is coming. I know she will look and that is the longing and this is the book"

"I bargain now. I offer buttons for his love."

"I cannot understand why my arm is not a lilac tree."

"I come from a country where we do not have the same struggles as you have. I respect your struggles. And it may surprise you, but I respect both sides of this struggle. It seems to be that in Europe there needs to be a left foot and a right foot to move forward. I wish that both feet move forward and the body moves towards its proper destiny. This is an intense country; the people are heroic, the spirit is independent. It is a difficult country to govern, it needs a strong government and a strong union? I would like to say to you, to the leaders of the left, and the leaders of the right, I sing... I sing for everyone. My song has no flag, my song has no party. And I say the prayer, that we said in our synagogue, I say it for the leader of your union and the leader of your party. May the Lord put a spirit, a wisdom and understanding into the hearts of your leaders and into the hearts of all their counsellors."

"I couldn't feel so I learned to touch."

"I did not suspect the insignificance of my dream. I thought I had conceived the vaster dream of my generation: be a magician. That was my idea of glory. Here is a plea based on my experience: do not be a magician, be magical."

"I did my best, it wasn't much I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch. I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you. And even though it all went wrong I'll stand before the Lord of Song with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah."

"I didn?t want to compromise the anthemic, hymn-like quality. I didn?t want it to get too punchy. I didn?t want to start a fight in the song. I wanted a revelation in the heart rather than a confrontation or a call-to-arms or a defense."

"I didn't fall in love of course it's never up to you but she was walking back and forth and i was passing through"