I am such a mass of contradictory impulses. Lunch, sunshine and Basho. Lunch, regret and rain. Lunch, joy and sorrow ate me up. William Matthews: I wanted company and to be alone. I am lonely because I cannot bear not to be lonely. I am so sad and so happy and so content at the same time. It is not, one minute this, the next minute that. It is all together everything all at once together. What I can�t get to is the place where the opposites hold hands, where the lion and lamb lie down together. Where I�m not constantly trying to amend, to erase, to revise, to explicate, to further explain this truth. This truth: I am dread and hope. I am love and destruction. I am sorry and I am not sorry.

And the woman in the flower-print dress hemmed
With stains
A half mile off
Is the authoress of no more than smoke rising,
Her sole diary & only publication,
From a distant chimney.
They have perhaps a year or two
Left of this
Before history begins to edit them into
Something without smoke or flies, something
Beyond all recognition.

������--Larry Levis

Here's some Greg Brown too: