«The poet can’t be too sad / Or, worse still, too sly. / For general understanding, / The poet must be open wide. The footlights in front of him, / Bare and bright, deathly; / The cold blaze of limelight / Branding his face. But every reader is a secret, / A buried treasure, of sort...»
«Bursting into the house like startled thunder / The first one comes, breathless, laughing, / Fluttering at my throat and spinning / To the sound of its own applause. Another is born in the silence of midnight, / Stealing upon me from who knows where. / It peers at me from an empty mirror,...»
«Did Beatrice have Dantesque visions? / Did Laura write Petrarchan sonnets: / I’ve taught women to speak, O God — / But how can I teach them silence?»
«Wrung-out insomnias, / Pooled wax at the base / Of a guttering candle, / The morning’s first sound / Of a hundred white bells. / Warm sills under Chernigov moons. / Bees and clover, darkness and dust, / Suffocating heat.»