"The Poet."
"She is working now in a room not unlike this one, the one
where I write or you read.
Her table is covered with paper.
The light of the lamp would be tempered
by a shade where the bulb's single harshness might
dissolve.
But it is not--
she has taken it off.
Her poems, I will never know them, though they are the ones
I most need.
Even the alphabet she writes in, I cannot decipher.
Her chair, let us imagine whether it is leather
or canvas, vinyl or wicker.
Let her have a chair, her shadeless lamp, the table.
Let one or two she loves be in the next room.
Let the door be closed, the sleeping ones healthy.
Let her have time and silence, enough paper
to make mistakes and go on."