...if you do not even understand what words say, how can you expect to pass judgement on what words conceal?

...if you do not even understand what words say,
how can you expect to pass judgement
on what words conceal?

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

I have tasted words, I have seen them. Never had her hands reached out in darkness and felt the texture of pure marble, never had her forehead bent forward and, as against a stone altar, felt safety. I am now saved. Her mind could not then so specifically have seen it, could not have said, "Now I will reveal myself in words, words may now supercede a scheme of mathematical-biological definition. Words may be my heritage and with words...A lady will be set back in the sky....there was hope in a block of unsubstantiated marble, words could carve and set up solid altars...Thought followed the wing that beat its silver into seven-branched larch boughs.

The same words conceal and declare the thoughts of men.

A Word is Dead

A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.

I say it just
Begins to live
That day.