Donald Justice Poems

Our lives avoided tragedy
Simply by going on and on,
Without end and with little apparent meaning.
Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes.
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Men at forty
Learn to close softly
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1
Dear ghosts, dear presences, O my dear parents,
Why were you so sad on porches, whispering?
What great melancholies were loosed among our swings!
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Now comes the evening of the mind.
Here are the fireflies twitching in the blood;
Here is the shadow moving down the page
Where you sit reading by the garden wall.
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All these maneuverings to avoid
The touching of hands,
These shifts to keep the eyes employed
On objects more or less neutral
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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
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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.
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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 keys
Of a childhood piano- outside the window, palms!
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Thirty today, I saw
The trees flare briefly like
The candles on a cake,
As the sun went down the sky,
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We have climbed the mountain.
There's nothing more to do.
It is terrible to come down
To the valley
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