Scraps of poetry, remembered over a lifetime, float to the surface: Auden, Jeffers, Neruda, Yeats, Shakespeare: “I am dying, Egypt, dying; only
I here importune death awhile, until
Of many thousand kisses the poor last
I lay up thy lips.” And Edna st Millay:
Conversation
“Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.”