I heard a man say a poem once, he said, ‘All that lives is holy.’ —Steinbeck

.

In daily speech, where we don’t stop to consider every word, we all use phrases like “the ordinary world,” “ordinary life,” “the ordinary course of events”

But in the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal.

Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it.

Not a single day and not a single night after it.


—Wisława Szymborska

.

I would give all metaphors

in return for one word

drawn out of my breast like a rib

for one word

contained within the boundaries

of my skin


—Zbigniew Herbert
Czesław Miłosz version

.