Donald Justice

It's snowing this afternoon and there are no flowers
There is only this sound of falling, quiet and remote,
Like the memory of scales descending the white
Of a childhood piano—outside the window, palms

R
B
HN speaks: “After so many years of pursuing the ideal I came home
But I had caught sight of it

The Man Closing Up," from Night Light" (1967), would make his bed,
If he could sleep on it
He would make his bed with white
And disappear into the white,

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

Men at
Learn to close
The doors to rooms they will not
Coming back to

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

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,