III
All afternoon I have thought how alike
Are "The Lament of the Pianos Heard in Rich Neighborhoods"
And
"Piano Practice At the Academy of the Holy Angels,"
And
how the girls that played are no longer here. Yet it was never
A vast music that mingled with the lusters of the room,
Nothing that would drown our desire for rest or silence.
It
was just there like the source of delight-
Unblemished, unobserved - though things did not always turn out well.
As now the green leaves brood under an early snow,
And
the houses are darkened by time. The sounds of summer
Have left. The purple woods, which color the distance,
Fonn a farewell for the monotonous autumn.
The snows have come, and the black shapes of the pianos
Are sleeping and cannot be roused, like the girls themselves
Who have gone, and the leaves, and all that was just here.
JOHN HOLLANDER
Bread-and-Butter!
Walking together for so many years
They could hold hand in hand and still avoid
What a jackhammer or a dog had done
To or on the sidewalk - such was the supple
Touch they kept in, such the ample closeness
That marked their every way of walking by
The way (and sitting in their house and lying
Down and rising up, for
all
that, as well)
