I have never found anybody who could stand to accept the daily demonstrative love I feel in me, and give back as good as I give.

How we need another soul to cling to, another body to keep us warm. To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this, I need someone to pour myself into.

Living with him is like being told a perpetual story: his mind is the biggest, most imaginative I have ever met. I could live in its growing countries forever.

Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted.

So much working, reading, thinking, living to do! A lifetime is not long enough.

I have stitched life into me like a rare organ--from "Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices", written 1962

There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends.

I talk to God but the sky is empty.

I need a father. I need a mother. I need some older, wiser being to cry to. I talk to God, but the sky is empty.

God, who am I?

The truth comes to me. The truth loves me.

I am not cruel —only truthful.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my eyes and all is born again.

I lean to you, numb as a fossil. Tell me I'm here.

I am terrified by this dark thingThat sleeps in me;All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

The blood jet is poetry,There is no stopping it.--from "Kindness", written 1 February 1963

Is it the sea you hear in me,Its dissatisfactions?Or the voice of nothing, that was you madness?--from "Elm", written 19 April 1962

O love, how did you get here?--from "Nick and the Candlestick", written 29 October 1962

Stars open among the lilies.Are you not blinded by such expressionless sirens?This is the silence of astounded souls.--from "Crossing the Water", written 1962

But writing poems and letters doesn't seem to do much good.

I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps outLooking, with its hooks, for something to love.--from "Elm", written 19 April 1962

I am solitary as grass. What is it I miss?Shall I ever find it, whatever it is?

Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after it--from "Elm", written 19 April 1962

Dying Is an art, like everything else.I do it exceptionally well.I do it so it feels like hell.I do it so it feels real.I guess you could say I have a call.

The thought that I might kill myself formed in my mind coolly as a tree or a flower.

I’ll never speak to God again.

What I fear most, I think, is the death of the imagination.

Not easy to state the change you made.If I'm alive now, I was dead,Though, like a stone, unbothered by it.

My flesh winced, in cowardice, from such a death.

I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy.

Is anyone anywhere happy?

I may never be happy, but tonight I am content.

Is everybody else sick too?' I asked with some hope.

I don't see,' I said, 'how people stand being old. Your insides all dry up. When you're young you're so self-reliant. You don't even need much religion.

let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences

August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time.

There was a beautiful time...