Quotes from Donald Justice

There is no way to ease the burden. The voyage leads on from harm to harm, A land of others and of silence.

Men at forty Learn to close softly The doors to rooms they will not be Coming back to.

Come back now and help me with these verses. Whisper to me some beautiful secret that you remember from life.

The Thin Man I indulge myself In rich refusals. Nothing suffices. I hone myself to This edge. Asleep, I Am a horizon.

See how the fearful chandelier trembles above you each time you open your mouth to sing. Sing.

donald justice: i often wonder about the others, where they are bound for on the voyage, what is the reason for their silence, was there some reason to go away?

Even while you sit there, unmovable, You have begun to vanish. And it does not matter. The poem will go on without you. It has the spurious glamor of certain voids.

Poem to Be Read at 3:00 A.M. by Donald Justice Excepting the diner On the outskirts The town of Ladora at 3 A.M. Was dark but For my headlights And up in One second-story room A single light Where someone Was sick or Perhaps reading As I drove past At seventy Not thinking This poem Is for whoever Had the light on

For only with your help shall They come to see–and with no more Than average daily terror– All things for what they are, All things for what they are.

Waiting for dusk and someone dear to come and whip him down the street, gently home

On the porch, green-shuttered, cool, Asleep is Bertram, that bronze boy, Who, having wound her around a spool, Sends her spinning like a toy Out to the garden, all alone, To sit and weep on a bench of stone. Soon the purple dark will bruise Lily and bleeding-heart and rose, And the little Cupid lose Eyes and ears and chin and nose, And Jane lie down with others soon Naked to the naked moon.

Elsewheres South The long green shutters are drawn. Against what parades? Closing our eyes against the sun, We try to imagine The darkness of an interior Where something might still happen: The razor lying open On the cool marble washstand, The drip of something--is it water?-- Upon stone floors.

Nostalgia comes with the smell of rain

This poem is not addressed to you.]" 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. Even while you sit there, unmovable, You have begun to vanish. And it does not matter. The poem will go on without you. It has the spurious glamor of certain voids.

If he could sleep on it. He would make his bed with white sheets And disappear into the white, Like a man diving, If he could be certain That the light Would not keep him awake, The light that reaches To the bottom.

How shall I speak of Doom, and ours in special, But as of something altogether common?

Men at forty Learn to close softly The doors to rooms they will not be Coming back to.

The artist will have had his revenge for being made to wait, A revenge not only necessary but right and clever-- Simply to leave him out of the scene forever.