It is strange how a scrap of poetry works in the mind and makes the legs move in time to it along the road.

Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice?

And the poem, I think, is only your voice speaking.

Three birds sit on a wire
One bird poops
Three birds shit on a wire

Now begins to rise in me the familiar rhythm; words that have lain dormant now lift, now toss their crests, and fall and rise, and falls again. I am a poet, yes. Surely I am a great poet.

First she starved herself of love, which meant also life; then of poetry in deference to what she thought her religion demanded.