When I think of poetry, I become teary, without meaning to, because of the wretchedness of human sentiments. - Sakutarō Hagiwara

Where is our happiness?
The more we dig the sand in the mud
the deeper the fountain of sorrow becomes, doesn't it?
The spring wavering in curtains' shadow
has gone away into the distance, rocking on a rickshaw.

If those who have already committed suicide and are dead were to become alive once again and speak, they would probably talk of the actuality of this. They are all regretting ghosts in their graves. I think about this a hundred times and am still terrified, and I shudder even in my dreams.

Poetry is the intellect's product of one second. A certain type of sentiment that one ordinarily has touches something like electricity and for the first time discovers a rhythm. This electricity is, for the poet, a miracle. Poetry is not something anticipated and made.