Charles Simic Dark Quotations

Poetry: three mismatched shoes at the entrance of a dark alley.

If I believe in anything, it is in the dark night of the soul. Awe is my religion, and mystery is its church.

The truth is dark under your eyelids.

The religion of the short poem, in every age and in every literature, has a single commandment: Less is always more. The short poem rejects preamble and summary. It's about all and everything, the metaphysics of a few words surrounded by much silence. …The short poem is a match flaring up in a dark universe.

There are knives that glitter like altars In a dark church Where they bring the cripple and the imbecile To be healed. There's a woden block where bones are broken, Scraped clean--a river dried to its bed