Poems Rethabile Likes

The Things by Donald Hall | Poems Rethabile Likes The Things by Donald Hall When I walk in my house I see pictures, bought long ago, framed and hanging —de Kooning, Arp, Laurencin, Henry Moore— that I've cherished and stared at for years, yet my eyes keep returning to the masters of the trivial—a white stone perfectly round, tiny lead models of baseball players, a cowbell, a broken great-grandmother's rocker, a dead dog's toy—valueless, unforgettable detritus that my children will throw away as I did my mother's souvenirs of trips with my dead father, Kodaks of kittens, and bundles of cards from her mothe...

The Funeral by Donald Hall | Poems Rethabile Likes The Funeral by Donald Hall It is the box from which no jack will spring. Now close the box, but not until she kisses The crossed, large hands which she already misses For their caress, and on his hands the ring. Now close the box, if we close anything. She sees the wooden lid, and she dismisses At least a hundred thoughtful artifices That would enjoy the tears that they would bring. The coffin does not matter. It was one Like many in the row from which she chose it. Now to be closed in it, he must become Like all the other dead men, deaf and dumb, Blank to the...

Affirmation by Donald Hall | Poems Rethabile Likes Affirmation by Donald Hall To grow old is to lose everything. Aging, everybody knows it. Even when we are young, we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads when a grandfather dies. Then we row for years on the midsummer pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage, that began without harm, scatters into debris on the shore, and a friend from school drops cold on a rocky strand. If a new love carries us past middle age, our wife will die at her strongest and most beautiful. New women come and go. All go. The pretty lover who announces...