Donald Justice Poems

We have climbed the mountain.
There's nothing more to do.
It is terrible to come down
To the valley
...

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!
...

Your face more than others' faces
Maps the half-remembered places
I have come to I while I slept—
Continents a dream had kept
...

Papier-mache body; blue-and-black cotton jersey cover. Metal stand. Instructions included.
-- Sears, Roebuck Catalogue

O my coy darling, still
...

Jane looks down at her organdy skirt
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,
...

The telephone poles
Have been holding their
Arms out
...

This one was put in a jacket,
This one was sent home,
This one was given bread and meat
But would eat none,
...

A delicate young Negro stands
With the reins of a horse clutched loosely in his hands;
So delicate, indeed, that we wonder if he can hold the spirited creature
beside him
...

It begins again, the nocturnal pulse.
It courses through the cables laid for it.
It mounts to the chandeliers and beats there, hotly.
We are too close. Too late, we would move back.
...

One of those men who can be a car salesman or a tourist from Syracuse or a hired assassin.
-- John D. MacDonald

You would not recognize me.
...