Quotes

All the others translate: the painter    sketches
A visible world to love or reject;
Rummaging into his living, the poet     fetches
The images out that hurt and connect,
From Life to Art by painstaking    adaptation,
Relying on us to cover the rift;
Only your notes are pure contraption,
Only your song is an absolute gift.
Pour out your presence, O delight,  cascading
The falls of the knee and the weirs of    the spine,
Our climate of silence and doubt     invading;
You, alone, alone, O imaginary song, Are unable to say an existence is wrong,
And pour out your forgiveness like a    wine.


—W.H. Auden, “The Composer”