The Poet Does Not Fear Death, Not

The Antagonism Between The Poet And The Politician Has Generally Been Evident In All Cultures.

At The Point When Continuity Was Interrupted By The First Nuclear Explosion, It Would Have Been Too Easy To Recover The Formal Sediment Which Linked Us With An Age Of Poetic Decorum, Of A Preoccupation With Poetic Sounds.

The Poet's Other Readers Are The Ancient Poets, Who Look Upon The Freshly Written Pages From An Incorruptible Distance. Their Poetic Forms Are Permanent, And It Is Difficult To Create New Forms Which Can Approach Them.

The Resistance Is A Moral Certainty, Not A Poetic One. The True Poet Never Uses Words In Order To Punish Someone. His Judgment Belongs To A Creative Order; It Is Not Formulated As A Prophetic Scripture.

We Wrote Verses That Condemned Us, With No Hope Of Pardon, To The Most Bitter Solitude.