This week: Donald Justice Edited by: Stormy Lady  
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This is poetry from the minds and the hearts of poets on Writing.Com. The poems I am going to be exposing throughout this newsletter are ones that I have found to be, very visual, mood setting and uniquely done. Stormy Lady
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Poem
by Donald Justice
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 no 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 with out guitar,
Neither 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 forge 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.
The Evening Of The Mind
by Donald Justice
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.
On August 12, 1925, in Miami Florida, Vascoe and Mary Justice welcomed their only son, Donald Justice, into the world. Vascoe worked as a carpenter. Despite the family being poor and the struggles of the depression Mary encouraged her son’s artistic interests. She signed him up for piano lessons at an early age. Justice’s passion for music continued throughout his lifetime. He went to the University of Miami and studied under the composer Carl Ruggles. He ultimately graduated with a degree in English literature. Justice went on to pursue a graduate degree at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
While studying at Chapel Hill he met and fell in love with writer Jean Ross. The couple were married in 1947. After completing his master's program, Justice went on to study for his doctoral degree at Stanford. He left stanford after a year of study, he felt the program was moving too slow. He went on to study in the Writing Workshop at Iowa University where he graduated with his PH .D in 1954. After graduating Justice started teaching at Syracuse University. He went on to teach at several universities over his teaching career, the University of California at Irvine, Princeton University, the University of Virginia, and the University of Iowa. In 1982 he started teaching at University of Florida, Gainesville. He taught there until his retirement in 1992.
Justice’s first volume of poetry was “The Summer Anniversaries,” published in 1960, which won him the Lamont Poetry Prize. Followed by “Night Light” published in 1967, “Departures,” in 1973, and “Selected Poems” in 1979 which received the Pulitzer Prize. Justice’s collection of prose and poetry, “The Sunset Maker: Poems/Stories/A Memoir,” was published in 1987. Justice published a collection of essays in 1988, “Oblivion: On Writers and Writing.” Justice continued writing, editing and publishing throughout the early 1990’s.
After retiring Justice lived with his wife Jean in Iowa. In 2004 he suffered a stroke which put him in a nursing home. On August 6, 2004 Donald Justice passed away. He was 78 years old.
Sadness
by Donald Justice
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 hears 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 in the 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 look 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.
Thank you all!
Stormy Lady
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The winner of "Stormy's poetry newsletter & contest" [ASR] is:
Determined to catch that prized Christmas cheer, which
Always eluded me this time of year, I
Set out some traps, it wasn't too hard—watched
Hallmark movies and sent out some cards.
I hung-up the stockings along with a wreath,
Nailed-up mistletoe for kissing beneath.
Good Christmas carols I whistled with glee,
Then made sugar cookies and decked-out the tree. I
Hung sparkling baubles on every bough—they
Reflected like lures—I'll catch Christmas now.
Out through the snow I dashed to the mall,
Used up my credit card, made quite a haul. I
Gift wrapped the presents and strung up some lights, but the
Holiday spirit still wouldn't bite.
Then Grandma stopped by and she offered advice
Hinting my efforts were really quite nice, but the
Essence of Christmas is not found in things...
Search deep in your heart ... for that's where it springs.
Now, spend time with loved ones and let your love flow.
Once you start giving, warm feelings will grow, and that's
When you'll feel Christmastime's magic glow.
Honorable mention:
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Poetry: December 28, 2022 Issue [#11730]
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