We were poor, but we were happy. We didn’t have much, but we were painting.

There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.

I am the poet of the poor, because I was poor when I loved; since I could not give gifts, I gave words.

If those who owe us nothing gave us nothing, how poor we would be!

Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.

yet we were infinitely poor. Wind, sand, and stars. The austerity of Trappists. But on this badly lighted cloth, a handful of men who possessed nothing in the world but their memories were sharing invisible riches.

When we lose a love, we write a poem; when we lose our homeland, we write a novel

Oh, Black known and unknown poets, how often have your auctioned pains sustained us? Who will compute the lonely nights made less lonely by your songs, or by the empty pots made less tragic by your tales?

If we were a people much given to revealing secrets, we might raise monuments and sacrifice to the memories of our poets, but slavery cured us of that weakness.

If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.

We thought of the poor, at that time, as quite divorced from us, who were not poor. By the exercise of one’s charity, life could be made all right. You would always have the poor with you, they were the unfortunate, and you made donations. You could handle them. It was mildly unpleasant, but not fundamentally upsetting. Now, for the first time, we face the dreadful reality that we are not separated. They are us. They are something we have made. There is no conceivable way today to say: Fish, and you’ll be all right. In hurt, in anguish, in shock, we are becoming aware that it is ourselves, who have to be found wanting, not the poor.

There is a well of melancholy poetry in every human bosom. We have all mourned over the destroyed illusion and the betrayed hope. We have quarrelled in some embittered moment with an early friend, and when too late lamented the estrangement.

The deeper we grow in the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the poorer we become – the more we realize that everything in life is a gift. The tenor of our lives becomes one of humble and joyful thanksgiving. Awareness of our poverty and ineptitude causes us to rejoice in the gift of being called out of darkness into wondrous light and translated into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son.

And we note our place with book markers
That measure what we've lost

Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.