Poem
This poem is not addressed to you. You may come into it briefly, But no one will find you here, no one. You will have changed before the poem will. Even while you sit there, unmovable, You have begun to vanish.
And it does not matter. The poem will go on without you. It has the spurious glamor of certain voids. It is not sad, really, only empty. Once perhaps it was sad, no one knows why. It prefers to remember nothing. Nostalgias were peeled from it long ago. Your type of beauty has no place here. Night is the sky over this poem. It is too black for stars. And do not look for any illumination. You neither can nor should understand what it means. Listen, it comes with out guitar, Neither in rags nor any purple fashion. And there is nothing in it to comfort you. Close your eyes, yawn.
It will be over soon. You will forge the poem, but not before It has forgotten you.
And it does not matter. It has been most beautiful in its erasures. O bleached mirrors!
Oceans of the drowned! Nor is one silence equal to another. And it does not matter what you think.
This poem is not addressed to you.
Donald Justice
Other author posts
In Bertrams Garden
Jane looks down at her organdy As if it somehow were the thing disgraced, For being there, on the floor, in the dirt, And she catches it up about her waist,
Nostalgia Of The Lakefronts
Cities burn behind us; the lake glitters A tall loudspeaker is announcing prizes; Another, by the lake, the times of cruises Childhood, once vast with terrors and surprises,
Men at Thirty
Thirty today, I The trees flare briefly The candles upon a cake As the sun went down the sky,
Loves Strategems
But these maneuverings to avoid The touching of hands, These shifts to keep the eyes employed On objects more or less neutral (As honor, for time being, commands) Will hardly prevent their downfall Stronger medicines are needed Alre...
