The faces with anticipated youth look out from the current identifications, judge or salesman, the neighbor, the man who killed, mattering only as the sliding world they betoken, the time it never mattered to accumulate, the fact that nothing mattered but for what one could make of it, some passing, oblique pleasure, a pain immense…

Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish, Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?) Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d, Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid…

Every time you leave home, Another road takes you Into a world you were never in. New strangers on other paths await. New places that have never seen you Will startle a little at your entry. Old places that know you well Will pretend nothing Changed since your last visit. When you travel, you find…

What it must be like to be an angel or a squirrel, we can imagine sooner. The last time we go to bed good, they are there, lying about darkness. They dandle us once too often, these friends who become our enemies. Suddenly one day, their juniors are as old as we yearn to be.…

Twenty years ago, the skeleton of a wild pig gleamed among violets while the leaf rot around it grew hot with spring. I slipped the molar out of its grin like an oiled key and took it home, leaving the boar to reassemble, if it ever did, at a gap-toothed resurrection. I hold it up…

Ants are not fond of margarine. Like us they prefer Butter. They do not have cholesterol problems Because as yet they do not own TVs. For centuries They have toiled in order that they might be able to Take a night off and watch the Northern Lights which Are their version of canned laughter. They…

Have ever you heard of the Land of Beyond, That dreams at the gates of the day? Alluring it lies at the skirts of the skies, And ever so far away; Alluring it calls: O ye the yoke galls, And ye of the trail overfond, With saddle and pack, by paddle and track, Let’s go…

Sometimes the notes are ferocious, skirmishes against the author raging along the borders of every page in tiny black script. If I could just get my hands on you, Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O’Brien, they seem to say, I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head. Other comments are more offhand,…

She comes on drenched in a perfume called Self Satisfaction from feather boa to silver pumps. She does not need to be loved by you though she’ll give you credit for good taste. Just because you say you love her she’s not throwing herself at your feet in gratitude. Every other star reveals how worthless…

One attempts to be significant on a grand scale in the knockdown battle of life but settles. It is clammy today, meaning wet and gray, not having a hard, calciniferous shell. I love the expression “happy as a clam,” how it imparts buoyant emotion to a rather, when you get down to it, nonexpressive creature.…

Your death, near now, is of an easy sort. So slow a fading out brings no real pain. Breath growing short Is just uncomfortable. You feel the drain Of energy, but thought and sight remain: Enhanced, in fact. When did you ever see So much sweet beauty as when fine rain falls On that small…