When I try to imagine a faultless love Or the life to come, what I hear is the murmur Of underground streams, what I see is a limestone landscape. - W. H. Auden

Acts of injustice done Between the setting and the rising sun In history lie like bones, each one.

O look, look in the mirror
O look in your distress
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless

O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart

In the eyes of others a man is a poet if he has written one good poem. In his own he is only a poet at the moment when he is making his last revision to a new poem. The moment before, he was still only a potential poet; the moment after, he is a man who has ceased to write poetry, perhaps forever.