I wanted to write a poemthat you would understand.For what good is it to meif you can't understand it?

The poem, to me (until I go broke) is an attempt, an experiment, a failing experiment, toward assertion with broken means but an assertion, always, of a new and total culture, the lifting of an environment to expression. Thus it is social, the poem is a social instrument.

But we who are wisershut ourselves inon either handand no one knowswhether we think goodor evil.

For I dance
And drink and sing,
Till some blind hand Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life
And strength and breath
And the want
Of thought is death

Then am I
A happy fly
If I live
Or if I die

A poet who has not produced a good poem before he is twenty-five, we may conclude cannot, and never will do so.

I give thee what is most my own - A Dedication by Francis William Bourdillon