
Donald Justice
In Memory Of The Unknown Poet Robert Boardman Vaughn
But the essential advantage for a poet is not, to have a beautiful world with which to deal: it is to be able to see beneath both beauty and ugliness; to see the boredom, and the horror, and the glory
T
S
It was his story
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...
The Tourist from Syracuse
One of those men who can be a car salesman or a tourist from Syracuse or a hired assassin
— John D
You would not recognize me
Mine is the face which blooms
On A Painting By Patient B Of The Independence State Hospital For The Insane
1 These seven houses have learned to face one another,
But not at the expected angles
Those silly brown lumps,
That are probably meant for hills and not other houses,
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,
Variations On A Text By Vallejo
Me moriré en Paris con aguacero
I will die in Miami in the sun,
On a day when the sun is very bright,
A day like the days I remember, a day like other days,
Men at Forty
Men at
Learn to close
The doors to rooms they will not
Coming back to
Sadness
Dear ghosts, dear presences,
O my dear parents,
Why were you so sad on porches, whispering
What great melancholies were loosed among our swings
To A Ten-Months Child
Late arrival,
One would think of blaming
For hesitating so
Who, setting his hand to
Villanelle at Sundown
Turn your head
Look
The light is turning yellow
The river seems enriched thereby, not to say deepened
Ode to a Dressmakers Dummy
Papier-mache body; blue-and-black cotton jersey cover
Metal stand
Instructions included
— Sears,
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,