"In the Balance."
This comes from a book called Faces.
"In the Balance."
"So you can have that brilliant smile,
somebody else must take your share of crying.
So you can touch the polestar with your mast,
somebody else must plummet, leaden, to the bottom.
So you can be the lovebirds, nestling
happy in your sleepy weather, someone else must brood alone
at night, without a wink, and think, and shiver,
hours like an owl in the wind, and come
undone so you can be together.
So that you can climb the rock face
to the sunny spot above, somebody else is giving you
support from in the shadows of the mountain shelf,
someone whose nerve is twisted there above the last abyss,
above disaster, somebody above himself."