Thom Gunn Quotes

11 Sourced Quotes

Their relationship consisted
In discussing if it existed.

Thom Gunn
True, they are not at rest yet, but now that they are indeed apart, winnowed from failures, they withdraw to an orbit and turn with disinterested hard energy, like the stars.

Thom Gunn
Thus for each blunt-faced ignorant one
The great grey rigid uniform combined
Safety with virtue of the sun.
Thus concepts linked like chainmail in the mind.

Thom Gunn
My thoughts are crowded with death
and it draws so oddly on the sexual
that I am confused
confused to be attracted
by, in effect, my own annihilation.

Thom Gunn
I prod, you react. Thus to and fro
We turn, to see ourselves perform the same
Comical acts inside the tragic game.

Thom Gunn
One joins the movement in a valueless world,
Choosing it, till both hurler and the hurled,
One moves as well, always toward, toward.

Thom Gunn
These seem like bristles, and the hide is tough.
No claw or web here: each foot ends in hoof.

Thom Gunn
No plausible nostalgia, no brown shame,
I had when treating with my enemies.
And always when a living impulse came
I acted, and my action made me wise.
And I regretted nothing.

Thom Gunn
Distorting hackneyed words in hackneyed songs
He turns revolt into a style, prolongs
The impulse to a habit of the time.

Thom Gunn
Direct me, gods, whose changes are all holy, To where it flickers deep in grass, the moly: Cool flesh of magic in each leaf and shoot, From milky flower to the black forked root.

Thom Gunn
Much that is natural, to the will must yield.
Men manufacture both machine and soul,
And use what they imperfectly control
To dare a future from the taken routes.

Thom Gunn