Quotes On Poetry
Because I Could Not Stop for Death
Because I could not stop for Death
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but ourselves
And Immortality
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.
We passed the school where children played
At wrestling in a ring
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.
We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.
Since then ‘tis centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses’ heads
Were toward eternity.
We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole that makes the wagon move.
We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.
We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.
We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.
(translated by Stephen Mitchell)
The temple bell stops
but the sound keeps coming
out of the flowers.
A poetry becomes real only when the name of the poet is forgotten and only the poem remains.