It [Bach's cello suites] is like a great diamond," said [Mischa] Maisky in a thick Russian accent, "with so many different cuts that reflect light in so many different ways.

But my heart is an old house(the kind my mothergrew up in)hell to heat and cooland faulty in the wiringand though it’s nice to look atI have no businessinviting lovers in.

As the sky prepares to settle its tired, aching feetinto the night’s velvet slippersI settle, into my armchair, soaking the teabag,of my thoughts, into warm liquidy stars.

Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting, Here I shade and hide my thoughts, I myself do not expose them, And yet they expose me more than all my other poems

Put your mouthful of words away and come with me to watch the lilies open in such a field, growing there like yachts, slowly steering their petals without nurses or clocks.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers.Let me keep company always with those who say "Look!" and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads.

the inletour friend looks as he didwhen we first knew him,and until I wake I believeI will die of grief, for I knowthat this boy grew into a manwho was a faithful friendwho died.

The rain to the wind said,You push and I'll pelt.'They so smote the garden bedThat the flowers actually knelt,And lay lodged--though not dead.I know how the flowers felt.

And must I then, indeed, Pain, live with youall through my life?-sharing my fire, my bed,Sharing-oh, worst of all things!-the same head?-And, when I feed myself, feeding you too?

A teacher will be frustrated if she is only motivated to teach what she has learned. Yet, if she is motivated because of the students, then she will learn from them how to teach.

Receio que a poesia é pior que o sexo tântrico: não mexe nem sai de cima.I'm afraid that poetry is worse than tantric sex: it does not not move or get off.

We lay our words like tenuous plats, build a bridge over itsunsinkable depth: Not a sea of longing,but the brack of wanting what’s physicalto help us forget we are physical.

For all the ghosts and corpses that shall never know the breath of our childrenso longfor the sacrifice and endurance of our mothers and the sustained breath of our fatherswe live

Two such as you with such a master speedCannot be parted nor be swept awayFrom one another once you are agreedThat life is only life forevermoreTogether wing to wing and oar to oa

And yet this self, containsTides, continents and stars―a myriad selves,Is small and solitary as one grass-bladePassed over by the windAmongst a myriad grasses on the prairie.