INTERVIEW
Poet, who are you?
Janus, god of gates and doors
and all beginnings
A weather cock
facing in every direction
A festive singer who can wear
goatskins and bleat
Are you not made like other men?
Twin of their image and echo
fired in one clay
Shadow of young men's mornings
and ghost of old men's nights
Parabola and paranymph
of lovers only
By what signs can a poet he known?
For whom zero is an opening
or a hole to be filled
Who can measure the earth
with a piece of rope
And place the sun on a disc of paper
under a cracked roof
How does a poet live?
As alchemist and archimage
of twenty-six letters
In constant employment
to nature
Free in every sense and word
except for treason
Of what value is such work?
To dip the pen of time
in dew and smoke and blood
To distinguish the creak
of a cradle from a coffin
To demonstrate that life
is the abscissa of eternity
Does a poet have any faith?
Whose only criterion
is self-corroboration
Who can find God
in a barrel of wine
And with the hands of a spider
pilot a path to the stars