Men at Forty
Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to
poem by Donald Justice
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A Birthday Candle
Thirty today, I saw
The trees flare briefly like
The candles on a cake,
As the sun went down the sky,
A momentary flash,
Yet there was time to wish
poem by Donald Justice
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To A Ten-Months' Child
Late arrival, no
One would think of blaming you
For hesitating so.
Who, setting his hand to knock
At a door so strange as this one,
Might not draw back?
poem by Donald Justice
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A Map Of Love
Your face more than others' faces
Maps the half-remembered places
I have come to I while I slept—
Continents a dream had kept
Secret from all waking folk
Till to your face I awoke,
And remembered then the shore,
And the dark interior.
Anonymous submission.
poem by Donald Justice
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On The Death Of Friends In Childhood
We shall not ever meet them bearded in heaven
Nor sunning themselves among the bald of hell;
If anywhere, in the deserted schoolyard at twilight,
forming a ring, perhaps, or joining hands
In games whose very names we have forgotten.
Come memory, let us seek them there in the shadows.
poem by Donald Justice
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Men at Thirty
Thirty today, I saw
The trees flare briefly like
The candles upon a cake
As the sun went down the sky,
A momentary flash
Yet there was time to wish
Before the break light could die
If I had known what to wish
As once I must have known
Bending above the clean candlelit tablecloth
To blow them out with a breath
poem by Donald Justice
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Love's Stratagems
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.
Already they find
None of their strategems have succeeded,
Nor would have, no,
Not had their eyes been stricken blind,
Hands cut off at the elbow.
poem by Donald Justice
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Bus Stop
Lights are burning
In quiet rooms
Where lives go on
Resembling ours.
The quiet lives
That follow us—
These lives we lead
But do not own—
Stand in the rain
So quietly
When we are gone,
So quietly . . .
And the last bus
Comes letting dark
Umbrellas out—
Black flowers, black flowers.
And lives go on.
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poem by Donald Justice
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Counting The Mad
This one was put in a jacket,
This one was sent home,
This one was given bread and meat
But would eat none,
And this one cried No No No No
All day long.
This one looked at the window
As though it were a wall,
This one saw things that were not there,
This one things that were,
And this one cried No No No No
All day long.
This one thought himself a bird,
This one a dog,
And this one thought himself a man,
An ordinary man,
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poem by Donald Justice
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Women In Love
It always comes, and when it comes they know.
To will it is enough to bring them there.
The knack is this, to fasten and not let go.
Their limbs are charmed; they cannot stay or go.
Desire is limbo: they¼re unhappy there.
It always comes, and when it comes they know.
Their choice of hells would be the one they know.
Dante describes it, the wind circling there.
The knack is this, to fasten and not let go.
The wind carries them where they want to go.
Yet it seems cruel to strangers passing there.
It always comes, and when it comes they know
The knack is this, to fasten and not let go.
poem by Donald Justice
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