Life Is First Boredom, Then Fear.

My Mother, Who Hates Thunderstorms, Holds Up Each Summer Day And Shakes It Out Suspiciously, Lest Swarms Of Grape-dark Clouds Are Lurking There.

I Think We Got Much Better Poetry When It Was All Regarded As Sinful Or Subversive, And You Had To Hide It Under The Cushion When Somebody Came In.

The Trees Are Coming Into Leaf Like Something Almost Being Said; The Recent Buds Relax And Spread, Their Greenness Is A Kind Of Grief. Is It That They Are Born Again And We Grow Old? No, They Die Too. Their Yearly Trick Of Looking New Is Written Down In Rings Of Grain. Yet Still The Unresting Castles Thresh In Fullgrown Thickness Every May. Last Year Is Dead, They Seem To Say, Begin Afresh, Afresh, Afresh.

Courage Is No Good: It Means Not Scaring Others. Being Brave Lets No One Off The Grave. Death Is No Different Whined At Than Withstood.

Here Silence Stands Like Heat. Here Leaves Unnoticed Thicken, Hidden Weeds Flower, Neglected Waters Quicken, Luminously-peopled Air Ascends; And Past The Poppies Bluish Neutral Distance Ends The Land Suddenly Beyond A Beach Of Shapes And Shingle. Here Is Unfenced Existence: Facing The Sun, Untalkative, Out Of Reach.