Donald Justice Poems

Men at forty
Learn to close softly
...

Our lives avoided tragedy
Simply by going on and on,
Without end and with little apparent meaning.
Oh, there were storms and small catastrophes.
...

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!
...

All these maneuverings to avoid
The touching of hands,
These shifts to keep the eyes employed
On objects more or less neutral
...

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.
...

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.
...

Thirty today, I saw
The trees flare briefly like
The candles on a cake,
As the sun went down the sky,
...

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
...

Thirty today, I saw
The trees flare briefly like
The candles upon a cake
As the sun went down the sky,
...

Lights are burning
In quiet rooms
Where lives go on
Resembling ours.
...