| Donald Justice |
| Ode to a Dressmaker's Dummy Papeir-mache body; blue-and-black cotton jersey cover. Metal stand. Instructions included. -- Sears, Roebuck Catalogue O my coy darling, still You wear for me the scent Of those long afternoons we spent, The two of us together, Safe in the attic from the jealous eyes Of household spies And the remote buffooneries of the weather; So high, Our sole remaining neighbor was the sky, Which, often enough, at dusk, Leaning its cloudy shoulders on the sill, Used to regard us with a bored and cynical eye. How like the terrified, Shy figure of a bride You stood there then, without your clothes Drawn up into So classic and so strict a pose Almost, it seemed, our little attic grew Dark with the first charmed night of the honeymoon. Or was it only some obscure Shape of my mother's youth I saw in you, There where the rude shadows of the afternoon Crept up your ankles and you stood Hiding your sex as best you could? -- Prim ghost the evening light shone through. -- A Donald Justice Reader: Selected Poetry and Prose, Middlebury / The University of New England Press, 1991 The Tourist from Syracuse 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. Mine is the face which blooms in The dank mirrors of washrooms As you grope for the light switch. My eyes have the expression Of the cold eyes of statues Watching their pigeons return From the feed you have scattered, And I stand on my corner With the same marble patience. If I move at all, it is At the same pace precisely As the shade of the awning Under which I stand waiting And with whose blackness it seems I am already blended. I speak seldom, and always In a murmur as quiet As that of crowds which surround The victims of accidents. Shall I confess who I am? My name is all names, or none. I am the used-car salesman, The tourist from Syracuse, The hired assassin, waiting. I will stand here forever Like one who has missed his bus -- Familiar, anonymous -- On my usual corner, The corner at which you turn To approach that place where now You must not hope to arrive. -- Night Light, University Press of New England, 1965 The Evening of the Mind 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. Now the dwarf peach trees, nailed to their trellises, Shudder and droop. Your know their voices now, Faintly the martyred peaches crying out Your name, the name nobody knows but you. It is the aura and the coming on. It is the thing descending, circling, here. And now it puts a claw out and you take it. Thankfully in your lap you take it, so. You said you would not go away again, You did not want to go away -- and yet, It is as if you stood out on the dock Watching a little boat drift out Beyond the sawgrass shallows, the dead fish ... And you were in it, skimming past old snags, Beyond, beyond, under a brazen sky As soundless as a gong before it's struck -- Suspended how? -- and now they strike it, now The ether dream of five-years-old repeats, repeats, And you must wake again to your own blood And empty spaces in the throat. -- Night Light, University Press of New England, 1965 On the Death of Friends in Chldhood 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 In games whose very names we have forgotten. Come, memory, let us seek them there in the shadows. -- New and Selected Poems, Alfred A. Knopf, 1999 Lorca in California 1. SONG OF THE STATE TROOPERS Blue are the cycles, Dark blue the helmets. The blue sleves shine With the rainbows of oil slicks, And why they don't cry is Their hearts are leather, Their skulls are hard plastic. They come up the roads. By night they come, Hunched over headlamps, Leaving behind them A silence of rubber And small fears like beach sand Ground underheel. Look, concealed by their helmets The vague outlines Of pistols are forming. They go by -- let them pass! O town of the moonflower, Preserve of the orange And the burst guava, Let them pass! 2. SONG OF THE HOURS Three cyclists pass under Christina's window. How far out she leans! But tonight she ignores The flowering goggles. Tonight she sees nothing Of fumes, of bandanas. And the breeze of eight-thirty Comes fumbling the curtain, Clumsy, uncertain. [PAUSE: guitar chord.] O, the scent of the lemons! Two hikers pass under Christina's window. How far out she leans! But tonight she ignores The bronze torsos. Tonight she hears nothing Of radios, of sirens. And the breeze of nine-thirty Encircles her waist. How cool it is, how chaste! [PAUSE: guitar chord.] O, the bitter groves! A young man stands under Christina's window. How far out she leans! But tonight she ignores The shadow in the shadow. She sees and hears nothing But night, the dark night. And the breeze of ten-thirty Comes up from the south, Hot breath on her mouth. [PAUSE: guitar chord.] O, the teeth of their branches! AFTER LORCA -- New and Selected Poems, Alfred A. Knopf, 1999 Sonnet to My Father Father, since always now the death to come Looks naked out from your eyes into mine, Almost it seems the death to come is mine And that I also shall be overcome, Father, and call for breath when you succumb, And struggle for your hand as you for mine In hope of comfort that shall not be mine Till for the last of me the angel come. But, father, though with you in part I die And glimpse beforehand that eternal place Where we forget the pain that brought us there, Father, and though you go before me there, Leaving this likeness only in your place, Yet while I live, you do not wholly die. -- The Summer Anniversaries, Weslyan University Press, 1960 Lethargy It smiles to see me Still in my bathrobe. It sits in my lap And will not let me rise. Now it is kissing my eyes. Arms enfold me, arms Pale with a thick down. It seems I am falling asleep To the sound of a story Being read me. This is the story. Weeks have passed Since first I lifted my hand To set it down. -- Departures, Antheneum, 1973 American Sketches CROSSING KANSAS BY TRAIN The telephone poles Have been holding their Arms out A long time now To birds That will not Settle there But pass with Strange cawings Westward to Where dark trees Gather about a water hole this Is Kansas the Mountains start here Just behind The closed eyes Of a farmer's Sons asleep In their work clothes POEM TO BE READ AT 3 A.M. 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 thnking This poem Is for whoever Had the light on -- Night Light, Weslyan University Press, 1967 For the Suicides in memory: J & G & J If we recall your voices As softer now, it's only That they must have drifted back A long way to have reached us Here, and upon such a wind As crosses the high passes. Nor does the blue of your eyes (Remembered) cast much light on The page ripped from the tablet. * * * Once there in the labyrith, Your were safe from your reasons. We stand, now, at the threshold, Peering in, but the passage, For us, remains obscure; the Corridors are still bloody. * * * What you meant to prove you have Proved: we did not care for you Nearly enough. Meanwhile the Bay was preparing herself To receive you, the for once Wholly adequate female To your dark inclinations; Under your care the pistol Was slowly learning to flower In the desired explosion, Disturbing the careful part And the briefly recovered Fixed smile of a forgotten Truimph; deep within the black Forest of childhood that tree Was already rising which, With the length of your body, Would cast the double shadow. * * * The masks by which we knew you Have been torn from you. Even Those mirrors, to which always You must have turned to confide, Cannot have recognized you, Stripped, as you were, finally. At the end of your shadow There sat another, waiting, Whose back was always to us. * * * When the last door had been closed, You watched, inwardly raging, For the first glimpse of your selves Approaching, jangling their keys. Musicians of the black keys, At last you compose yourselves. We hear the music raging Under the lids we have closed. -- Night Light, University Press of New England, 1965 Here in Katmandu We have climbed the mountain. There's nothing more to do. It is terrible to come down To the valley Where, amidst many flowers, One thinks of snow, As, formerly, amidst snow, Climbing the mountain, One thought of flowers, Tremulous, ruddy with dew, In the valley. One caught their scent coming down. It is difficult to adjust, once down, To the absence of snow. Clear days, from the valley, One looks up at the mountain. What else is there to do? Prayer wheels, flowers! Let the flowers fade, the prayer wheels run down. What have these to do With us who have stood atop the snow Atop the mountain, Flags seen from from the valley? It might be possible to live in the valley, To bury oneself among flowers, If one could forget the mountain, How, never once looking down, Stiff, blinded with snow, One knew what to do. Meanwhile it is not easy here in Katmandu, Especially when to the valley That wind which means snow Elsewhere, but here means flowers, Comes down, As soon it must, from the mountain. -- The Summer Anniversaries, Weslyan University Press, 1960 Landscape with Little Figures There once were some pines, a canal, a piece of sky. The pines are the houses now of the very poor, Huddled together, in a blue, ragged wind. Children go whistling their dogs, down by the mud flats, Once the canal. There's a red ball lost in the weeds. It's winter, it's after supper, it's goodbye. O goodbye to the houses, the children, the little red ball, And the pieces of sky that will go on now falling for days. -- New and Selected Poems, Alfred A. Knopf, 1999 Psalm and Lament Hialeah, Florida in memory of my mother (1897 - 1974) The clocks are sorry, the clocks are very sad. One stops, one goes on striking the wrong hours. And the grass burns terribly in the sun, The grass turns yellow secretly at the roots. Now suddenly the yard chairs look empty, the sky looks empty, The sky looks vast and empty. Out on Red Road the traffic continues; everything continues. Nor does memory sleep; it goes on. Out spring the butterflies of recollection, And I think that for the first time I understand The beautiful ordinary light of this patio And even perhaps the dark rich earth of a heart. (The bedclothes, they say, had been pulled down. I will not describe it. I do not want to describe it. No, but the sheets were drenced and twisted. They were the very handkerchiefs of grief.) Let summer come now with its schoolboy trumpets and fountains. But the years are gone, the years are finally over. And there is only This long desolation of flower-bordered sidewalks That runs to the corner, turns, and goes on, That disappears and goes on Into the black oblivion of a neighborhood and a world Without billboards or yesterdays. Sometimes a sad moon comes and waters the roof tiles. Buthe years are gone. There are no more years. -- The Sunset Maker, Atheneun, 1987 Sadness 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! As before a storm one hear the leaves whispering And marks each small change in the atmosphere, So was it then to overhear and to fear. 2 But all things then were oracle and secret. Remember the night when, lost, returning, we turned back Confused, and our headlights singled out the fox? Our thoughts went with it then, turning and turning back With the same terror, into the deep thicket Beside the highway, at home in the dark thicket. 3 I say the wood within is the dark wood, Or wound no torn shirt can entirely bandage, But the sad hand returns to it in secret Repeatedly, encouraging the bandage To speak of that other world we might have borne, The lost world buried before it could be born. 4 Burchfield describes the pinched white souls of violets Frothing the mouth of a derelict old mine Just as an evil August night comes down, All umber, but for one smudge of dusky carmine. It is the sky of a peculiar sadness -- The other side perhaps of some rare gladness. 5 What is it to be happy, after all? Think Of the first small joys. Think of how our parents Would whistle as they packed for the long summers, Or, busy about the usual tasks of parents, Smile down at us suddenly for some secret reason, Or simply smile, not needing any reason. 6 But even inthe summers we remember The forest had its eyes, the sea its voices, And there were roads no map would ever master, Lost roads and moonless nights and ancient voices -- And night crept down with an awful slowness toward the water, And there were lanterns once, doubled in the water. 7 Sadness has its own beauty, of course. Toward dusk, Let us say, the river darkens and looks bruised, And we stand looking out at it through rain. It is as if life itself were somehow bruised And tender at this hour; and a few tears commence. Not that they are but that they feel immense. -- New and Selected Poems, Alfred A. Knopf, 1999 Poem 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. It is not sad, really, only empty. Once perhaps it was sad, no one knows why. It prefers to remember nothing. Nostalgias were peeled from it long ago. Your type of beauty has no place here. Night is the sky over this poem. It is too black for stars. And do not look for any illumination. You neither can nor should understand what it means. Listen, it comes without guitar, Neigher in rags nor any purple fashion. And there is nothing in it to comfort you. Close your eyes, yawn. It will be over soon. You will forget the poem, but not before It has forgotten you. And it does not matter. It has been most beautiful in its erasures. O bleached mirrors! Oceans of the drowned! Nor is one silence equal to another. And it does not matter what you think. This poem is not addressed to you. -- Departures, Antheneum, 1973 |
| A native of Florida, Donald Justice (b. 1925) has taught at at a number of universities, including the University of Florida at Gainsville, and the Iowa Writers Workshop. His poems are filled with vast landscapes, silences, premonition, menace and implied betrayal, reminiscent of film noire. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980. |
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| Billie Dee's Electronic Poetry Anthology |
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| Other Donald Justice Sites |
| The Academy of American Poets: Donald Justice AAP listing Donald Justice profile of the poet, bibliography, selection of writings Between the Lines: Interview with Poets: Donald Justice in Conversation with Philip Hoy BTL talks with the poet about his life and work. Eleven poems included. University of Delaware Library: Donald Justice Papers Biographic notes and catalogue of papers held in archives. |
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