William Stafford (January 17, 1914 – August 28, 1993 / Kansas)

poet William Stafford
#172 on top 500 poets

Quotations

  • ''At noon in the desert a panting lizard
    waited for history, its elbows tense,
    watching the curve of a particular road
    as if something might happen.''
    William Stafford (1914-1941), U.S. poet. At the Bomb Testing Site (l. 1-4). . . The Darkness Around Us Is Deep; Selected Poems. Robert Bly, ed. (1993) HarperCollins.
    7 person liked.
    		2 person did not like.
  • ''a doe, a recent killing;
    she had stiffened already, almost cold.
    I dragged her off she was large in the belly.''
    William Stafford (1914-1941), U.S. poet. Traveling through the Dark (l. 6-8). . . The Darkness Around Us Is Deep; Selected Poems. Robert Bly, ed. (1993) HarperCollins.
    14 person liked.
    		1 person did not like.
  • ''around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.''
    William Stafford (1914-1941), U.S. poet. Traveling through the Dark (l. 16). . . The Darkness Around Us Is Deep; Selected Poems. Robert Bly, ed. (1993) HarperCollins.
    13 person liked.
    		1 person did not like.

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Thinking For Berky

In the late night listening from bed
I have joined the ambulance or the patrol
screaming toward some drama, the kind of end
that Berky must have some day, if she isn't dead.

The wildest of all, her father and mother cruel,
farming out there beyond the old stone quarry
where highschool lovers parked their lurching cars,
Berky learned to love in that dark school.

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