“My poems are like a dagger
Sprouting flowers from the hilt;”
Source: Simple Verses (1891), V
Context: My poems are like a dagger
Sprouting flowers from the hilt;
My poetry is like a fountain
Sprinkling streams of coral water.
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José Martí 103
Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader 1853–1895Related quotes
"Listening"
Context: What is this crap, Mother, this life is short and terrible. What is this metaphysical shit, what is this disease you intelligentsia are always talking about.
First we said: Intelligentsia! Us? Oh, the way words lie down under decades, then the Union of Restless Diggers out of sheer insomnia pulls them up: daggers for the young but to us they look like flowers of nostalgia that grew in our mother’s foreign garden. What did my mother say? Darling, you should have come to Town Hall last night, the whole intelligentsia was there. My uncle, strictly: the intelligentsia will never permit it.!

Variant translation:
Who says my poems are poems?
My poems are not poems.
After you know my poems are not poems,
Then we can begin to discuss poetry!
"Zen Poetics of Ryokan" in Simply Haiku: A Quarterly Journal of Japanese Short Form Poetry (Summer 2006) http://www.hermitary.com/articles/ryokan_poetics.html
Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf : Zen Poems of Ryokan (1993)
“You are like one of your bees, going from flower to flower, sampling the nectar of this and that.”
ibid
The Rahotep series, Book 2: Tutankhamun

On choosing poetry as his go-to writing form in “'Felon' Author Says, 'Everybody Has To Tell Their Kids Something'” https://www.npr.org/2019/11/03/775605155/felon-author-says-everybody-has-to-tell-their-kids-something in NPR (2019 Nov 3)

“I sit in my tree
I sing like the birds
My beak is my pen
My songs are my poems.”
Source: My Name Is Mina

“Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand?”
Macbeth, Act II, scene i.
Macbeth (1606)