Even a passing moment has its fertile past. - Wisława Szymborska

After every war someone has to tidy up. Things won't pick themselves up, after all.<p>Someone has to shove the rubble to the roadsides so the carts loaded with corpses can get by.

My apologies to past loves for treating the latest as the first.

Contemporary poets are skeptical and suspicious even, or perhaps especially, about themselves. They publicly confess to being poets only reluctantly, as if they were a little ashamed of it. But in our clamorous times it's much easier to acknowledge your faults, at least if they're attractively packaged, than to recognize your own merits, since these are hidden deeper and you never quite believe in them yourself.