[in Old Age] There Is A Childlike

Life Comes In Clusters, Clusters Of Solitude, Then A Cluster When There Is Hardly Time To Breathe.

It Is Sometimes The Most Fragile Things That Have The Power To Endure And Become Sources Of Strength.

This Suspension Of One's Own Reality, This Being Entirely Alone In A Strange City (at Times I Wondered If I Had Lost The Power Of Speech) Is An Enriching State For A Writer. Then The Written Word ... Takes On An Intensity Of Its Own. Nothing Gets Exteriorized Or Dissipated; All Is Concentrated Within.

Each New Poem Is Partly Propelled By The Formal Energies Of All The Poems That Have Preceded It In The History Of Literature.

Without Darkness, Nothing Comes To Birth, As Without Light, Nothing Flowers.