What is the world? tell, Worldling (if thou know it).
If it be good, why do all ills o’erflow it?
If it be bad, why dost thou like it so?
If it be sweet, how come sit bitter then?
If it be bitter, what bewitcheth men?
If it be friend, why kills it (as a foe)
Vain-minded men that over-love and lust it?
If it be foe, Fondling, how dar’st thou trust it?
“I don’t know what the voice of my poetry is. I suppose it’s mine but it is a part of me that I’m only in touch with while I’m writing. I don’t see it as like my conversational voice or like anybody else’s voice that I know. It is a voice that occasionally intrudes in my ordinary thinking. Suddenly a line of what appears to be poetry will pop into my mind and I will have no idea where it came from.”
John Ashbery