The sea has this contradictory quality, that the more you see of it, the more it overwhelms the eye and disappears in its own brightness. Like a flame, whose meaning is light but whose centre is dark, it demands to be undefined.

One of the rules of Greek lament poetry is that it mustn't mention the dead by name in case of invoking a ghost. Maybe the 'Iliad,' crowded with names, is more than a poem. Maybe it's a dangerous piece of the brightness of both this world and the next.

At each moment, a poem might grow into a totally different shape. It is not so much like working in a garden. It is more as if you remade the garden every day.

If you put a real leaf and a silk leaf side by side, you'll see something of the difference between Homer's poetry and anyone else's. There seem to be real leaves still alive in the 'Iliad,' real animals, real people, real light attending everything.

On a spiritual level, it's as though with my sighted eye I see what's before me, and with my unsighted eye I see what's hidden. It's illuminated life more than darkened it.

In a dark time, the eye begins to see.