The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes, and before I could read them for myself, I had come to love just the words of them, the words alone.

These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I'd be a damn' fool if they weren't.

These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I'd be a damn' fool if they weren't.

As I read more and more - and it was not all verse, by any means - my love for the real life of words increased until I knew that I must live with them and in them, always. I knew, in fact, that I must be a writer of words, and nothing else.

Ring around the rosie.
A pocket full of posie.
Ashes ashes, we all fall down.
Some people say that this poem is about the Black Death, the fourteenth-century plague that killed 100-million people...
Sadly, though, most experts think this is nonsense...
How can I be so sure about this rhyme when all the experts disagree?
Because I ate the kid who made it up.

The future for me is already a thing of the past -
You were my first love and you will be my last