Quotes from May Swenson

Poetry can magnify experience.

Love is ... the bite into bread again.

Where can I gowithout my mountall eager and quickHow will I knowin thicket aheadis danger or treasurewhen Body my goodbright dog is deadQuestion, st. 3

Body my housemy horse my houndwhat will I dowhen you are fallenQuestion [1954], st. 1

It's doneon a diamond,and for fun.It's abouthome, and it'sabout run.

Youth is given. One must put it awaylike a doll in a closet,take it out and play with it onlyon holidays.How to Be Old [1963]

My facea negative in the slatewindow,I sitin a litcorridor that racesthrough a darkone.Riding the "A" [1963]

The summer that I was ten–Can it be there was only onesummer that I was ten?The Centaur [1958]

Love came bearing love A chalice of light We bathed in love and drank it Then our flesh Seemed like the leaves Enameled bright forever.

Body my house my horse my hound What will I do when you are fallen Where will I sleep How will I ride What will I hunt Where can I go without my mount all eager and quick How will I know in thicket ahead is danger or treasure When Body my good bright dog is dead How will it be to lie in the sky without roof or door and wind for an eye with cloud for a shift how will I hide?

Take earth for your own large room and the floor of earth carpeted with sunlight and hung round with silver wind for your dancing place.

Body my house my horse my hound what will I do when you are fallen

It's not for me - religion. It seems like a redundancy for a poet.

an Evolution strange two Tongues touch exchange a Feast unknown to stone or tree or beast

Four-Word Lines" Your eyes are just like bees, and I feel like a flower. Their brown power makes a breeze go over my skin. When your lashes ride down and rise like brown bees' legs, your prolonged gaze makes my eyes gauze. I wish we were in some shade and no swarm of other eyes to know that I'm a flower breathing bare, laid open to your bees' warm stare. I'd let you wade in me and seize with your eager brown bees' power a sweet glistening at my core.

Remain aghast at life

I'm two eyes looking out of a suit of armor. I write because I can't talk.

October I sit with braided fingers and closed eyes in a span of late sunlight. The spokes are closing. It is fall: warm milk of light, though from an aging breast. I do not mean to pray. The posture for thanks or supplication is the same as for weariness or relief. But I am glad for the luck of light. Surely it is godly, that it makes all things begin, and appear, and become actual to each other. Light that's sucked into the eye, warming the brain with wires of color.