Some favorite poems:

  To A Young  Poet

Time cannot break the bird’s wing from the bird.

Bird and wing together

Go down, one feather.

No thing that ever flew,

Not the lark, not you,

Can die as others do.

n      Edna St. Vincent Millay

When You are Old

When you are old and gray and full of sleep

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true;

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled

And paced upon the mountain overhead,

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

n      William Butler Yeats

In Mind

There’s in my mind a woman

of innocence, unadorned but

fair-featured, and smelling of

apples or grass.  She wears

a utopian smock or shift, her hair

is light brown and smooth, and she

is kind and very clean without

ostentation –

               but she has

no imagination.

                    And there’s a

turbulent moon-ridden girl

or old woman, or both,

dressed in opals and rags, feathers

and torn taffeta,

who knows strange songs –

but she is not kind.

• Denise Levertov