Mark Strand
Poet
1934-04-11
Quotes by Mark Strand
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It came to my house.It sat on my shoulders.Your shadow is yours. I told it so. I said it was yours.I have carried it with me too long. I give it back.
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When we walk in the sunour shadows are like barges of silence.
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From the shadow of domes in the city of domes,A snowflake, a blizzard of one, weightless, entered your roomAnd made its way to the arm of the chair where you, looking upFrom your book, saw it the moment it landed. That's allThere was to it.
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Those hours given over to basking in the glow of an imaginedfuture, of being carried away in streams of promise by a love ora passion so strong that one felt altered forever and convincedthat even the smallest particle of the surrounding world wascharged with purpose of impossible grandeur; ah, yes, andone would look up into the trees and be thrilled by the wind-loosened river of pale, gold foliage cascading down and by thehigh, melodious singing of countless birds; those moments, somany and so long ago, still come back, but briefly, like firefliesin the perfumed heat of summer night.
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Even this late it happens:the coming of love, the coming of light.
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These wrinkles are nothingThese gray hairs are nothing,This stomach which sagswith old food, these bruisedand swollen ankles, my darkening brain,they are nothing.I am the same boymy mother used to kiss.
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In a fieldI am the absenceof field.This isalways the case.Wherever I amI am what is missing.
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Sometimes he did not know if he slept or just thought about sleep.
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Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.There is no happiness like mine.I have been eating poetry.
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Those hours given over to basking in the glow of an imaginedfuture, of being carried away in streams of promise by a love ora passion so strong that one felt altered forever and convincedthat even the smallest particle of the surrounding world wascharged with purpose of impossible grandeur; ah, yes, andone would look up into the trees and be thrilled by the wind-loosened river of pale, gold foliage cascading down and by thehigh, melodious singing of countless birds; those moments, somany and so long ago, still come back, but briefly, like firefliesin the perfumed heat of summer night.
Read quote -
From the shadow of domes in the city of domes,A snowflake, a blizzard of one, weightless, entered your roomAnd made its way to the arm of the chair where you, looking upFrom your book, saw it the moment it landed. That's allThere was to it.
Read quote -
Sometimes he did not know if he slept or just thought about sleep.
Read quote -
These wrinkles are nothingThese gray hairs are nothing,This stomach which sagswith old food, these bruisedand swollen ankles, my darkening brain,they are nothing.I am the same boymy mother used to kiss.
Read quote -
In a fieldI am the absenceof field.This isalways the case.Wherever I amI am what is missing.
Read quote -
Even this late it happens:the coming of love, the coming of light.
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It came to my house.It sat on my shoulders.Your shadow is yours. I told it so. I said it was yours.I have carried it with me too long. I give it back.
Read quote -
Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.There is no happiness like mine.I have been eating poetry.
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When we walk in the sunour shadows are like barges of silence.
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The number of people writing poems is vast, and their reasons for doing so are many, that much can be surmised from the stacks of submissions.
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But I tend to think of the expressive part of me as rather tedious - never curious or responsive, but blind and self-serving.
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