Eugenio Montale – The Lemon Trees

“It’s in such silences you can see in every fleeting human shadow some disturbed divinity.”

John Ashbery – Soonest Mended

“Barely tolerated, living on the margin In our technological society, we were always having to be rescued On the brink of destruction, like heroines in Orlando Furioso Before it was time to start all over again.”

Sharon Olds – This Hour

“You could never really say what it is like, this hour of drinking wine together on a hot summer night, in the living room with the windows open”

Ron Padgett – Love Poem

“I become the cigarette and you the match, or I the match and you the cigarette, blazing with kisses that smoulder toward heaven.”

Charles Reznikoff – [The city breaks in houses to the sea, uneasy with waves,]

“We, whose lives are only a few words, Watch the young moon leaning over the baby at her breast And the stars small to our littleness.”