About My Poems --- 17 Poems of Donald Justice

About My Poems

By Donald Justice


How fashionably sad my early poems are!
On their clipped lawns and hedges the snows fall;
Rains beat against the tarpaulins of their porches,
Where, Sunday mornings, the bored children sprawl,
Reading the comics, before the parents rise.
---The rhymes, the meters, how they paralyze!

Who walks out through their streets tonight? No one.
You know these small towns, how all traffic stops
At ten; the corner streetlamps gathering moths;
And the pale mannequins waiting in dark shops,
Undressed, and ready for the dreams of men.
--- Now the long silence. Now the beginning again.

------

The Voice of Col. Von Stauffenberg Rising From Purgatory

By Donald Justice

"Something fearful has happened ..... The Fuhrer is alive!"
Fen. Fellgiebel, July 20, 1944


That last night we passed quietly, my brother and I.
We sat talking of poems into the small hours;

And saw, at dawn, for the last time, through the beautiful tall windows,
The smoke as of some great sacrifice suspended over the city.

And the little life remaining seemed very full.

And to turn away then, to turn one's back to God,
To cast one's self aside as simply as a child
Discards the doll he has grown weary of ...

They led us out that evening into the courtyard.
There was a mound of earth there, left from the excavations,

Against which they posed us
And it was there that the lights of the parked trucks found us.

All it would ever come to now was grief and a little pride,
Grief, pride, and the overwhelming regret
That through failure one had been spared for heaven after all.

---------------------

Ode to a Dressmaker's Dummy

By Donald Justice

Papier-mache body; blue-and-black cotton jersey cover.

Metal stand. Instructions included.

 --Sears, Roebuck Catalogue



 O my coy darling, still

You wear for me the scent

Of those long afternoons we spent,

The two of us together,

Safe in the attic from the jealous eyes

Of household spies

And the remote buffooneries of the weather;

So high,

Our sole remaining neighbor was the sky,

Which, often enough, at dusk,

Leaning its cloudy shoulders on the sill,

Used to regard us with a bored and cynical eye.



How like the terrified,

Shy figure of a bride

You stood there then, without your clothes,

Drawn up into

So classic and so strict a pose

Almost, it seemed, our little attic grew

Dark with the first charmed night of the honeymoon.

Or was it only some obscure

Shape of my mother's youth I saw in you,

There where the rude shadows of the afternoon

Crept up your ankles and you stood

Hiding your sex as best you could?--

Prim ghost the evening light shone through.



----------





Women in Love



By Donald Justice

It always comes, and when it comes they know.

To will it is enough to bring them there.

The knack is this, to fasten and not let go.



Their limbs are charmed; they cannot stay or go.

Desire is limbo: they¼re unhappy there.

It always comes, and when it comes they know.



Their choice of hells would be the one they know.

Dante describes it, the wind circling there.

The knack is this, to fasten and not let go.



The wind carries them where they want to go.

Yet it seems cruel to strangers passing there.

It always comes, and when it comes they know

The knack is this, to fasten and not let go.

--------------------



Love's Stratagems

By Donald Justice


But these maneuverings to avoid

The touching of hands,

These shifts to keep the eyes employed

On objects more or less neutral

(As honor, for time being, commands)

Will hardly prevent their downfall.



Stronger medicines are needed.

Already they find

None of their stratagems have succeeded,

Nor would have, no,

Not had their eyes been stricken blind,

Hands cut off at the elbow.

---------------------



The Assassination

By Donald Justice

It begins again, the nocturnal pulse.

It courses through the cables laid for it.

It mounts to the chandeliers and beats there, hotly.

We are too close. Too late, we would move back.

We are involved with the surge.



Now it bursts. Now it has been announced.

Now it is being soaked up by newspapers.

Now it is running through the streets.

The crowd has it. The woman selling carnations

And the man in the straw hat stand with it in their shoes.



Here is the red marquee it sheltered under.

Here is the ballroom, here

The sadly various orchestra led

By a single gesture. My arms open.

It enters. Look, we are dancing.

----------------------



Men at Thirty

By Donald Justice

Thirty today, I saw

The trees flare briefly like

The candles upon a cake

As the sun went down the sky,

A momentary flash

Yet there was time to wish



Before the break light could die

If I had known what to wish

As once I must have known

Bending above the clean candlelit tablecloth

To blow them out with a breath



----------------------



Men at Forty

By Donald Justice

Men at forty

Learn to close softly

The doors to rooms they will not be

Coming back to

-----------------



On the death of Friends in childhood

By Donald Justice

We shall not ever meet them bearded in heaven

Nor sunning themselves among the bald of hell;

If anywhere, in the deserted schoolyard at twilight,

forming a ring, perhaps, or joining hands

In games whose very names we have forgotten.

come memory, let us seek them there in the shadows.

--------------



To a Ten-months' child

By Donald Justice

Late arrival, no

One would think of blaming you

For hesitating so.



Who, setting his hand to knock

At a door so strange as this one,

Might not draw back?

---------------



Ode to a Dressmaker’s Dummy

By Donald Justice

 Papier-mache body; blue-and-black cotton

jersey cover. Metal stand. Instructions included.



--Sears, Roebuck Catalogue





O my coy darling, still

You wear for me the scent

Of those long afternoons we spent,

The two of us together,

Safe in the attic from the jealous eyes

Of household spies

And the remote buffooneries of the weather;

So high,

Our sole remaining neighbor was the sky,

Which, often enough, at dusk,

Leaning its cloudy shoulders on the sill,

Used to regard us with a bored and cynical eye.



How like the terrified,

Shy figure of a bride

You stood there then, without your clothes,

Drawn up into

So classic and so strict a pose

Almost, it seemed, our little attic grew

Dark with the first charmed night of the honeymoon.

Or was it only some obscure

Shape of my mother’s youth I saw in you,

There where the rude shadows of the afternoon

Crept up your ankles and you stood

Hiding your sex as best you could?--

Prim ghost the evening light shone through.
--------------



Poem

By Donald Justice

This poem is not addressed to you.

You may come into it briefly,

But no one will find you here, no one.

You will have changed before the poem will.



Even while you sit there, unmovable,

You have begun to vanish. And it does no matter.

The poem will go on without you.

It has the spurious glamour of certain voids.



It is not sad, really, only empty.

Once perhaps it was sad, no one knows why.

It prefers to remember nothing.

Nostalgias were peeled from it long ago.



Your type of beauty has no place here.

Night is the sky over this poem.

It is too black for stars.

And do not look for any illumination.



You neither can nor should understand what it means.

Listen, it comes with out guitar,

Neither in rags nor any purple fashion.

And there is nothing in it to comfort you.



Close your eyes, yawn. It will be over soon.

You will forge the poem, but not before

It has forgotten you. And it does not matter.

It has been most beautiful in its erasures.



O bleached mirrors! Oceans of the drowned!

Nor is one silence equal to another.

And it does not matter what you think.

This poem is not addressed to you. 

--------------------



Villanelle at Sundown

By Donald Justice

Turn your head. Look. The light is turning yellow.

The river seems enriched thereby, not to say deepened.

Why this is, I'll never be able to tell you.



Or are Americans half in love with failure?

One used to say so, reading Fitzgerald, as it happened.

(That Viking Portable, all water spotted and yellow--



remember?) Or does mere distance lend a value

to things? --false, it may be, but the view is hardly cheapened.

Why this is, I'll never be able to tell you.



The smoke, those tiny cars, the whole urban milieu--

One can like anything diminishment has sharpened.

Our painter friend, Lang, might show the whole thing yellow



and not be much off. It's nuance that counts, not color--

As in some late James novel, saved up for the long weekend

and vivid with all the Master simply won't tell you.



How frail our generation has got, how sallow

and pinched with just surviving! We all go off the deep end

finally, gold beaten thinly out to yellow.

And why this is, I'll never be able to tell you.



----------------

Variations on a Text by Vallejo

By Donald Justice

Me moriré en París con aguacero...



I will die in Miami in the sun,

On a day when the sun is very bright,

A day like the days I remember, a day like other days,

A day that nobody knows or remembers yet,

And the sun will be bright then on the dark glasses of strangers

And in the eyes of a few friends from my childhood

And of the surviving cousins by the graveside,

While the diggers, standing apart, in the still shade of the palms,

Rest on their shovels, and smoke,

Speaking in Spanish softly, out of respect.



I think it will be on a Sunday like today,

Except that the sun will be out, the rain will have stopped,

And the wind that today made all the little shrubs kneel down;

And I think it will be a Sunday because today,

When I took out this paper and began to write,

Never before had anything looked so blank,

My life, these words, the paper, the grey Sunday;

And my dog, quivering under a table because of the storm,

Looked up at me, not understanding,

And my son read on without speaking, and my wife slept.



Donald Justice is dead. One Sunday the sun came out,

It shone on the bay, it shone on the white buildings,

The cars moved down the street slowly as always, so many,

Some with their headlights on in spite of the sun,

And after a while the diggers with their shovels

Walked back to the graveside through the sunlight,

And one of them put his blade into the earth

To lift a few clods of dirt, the black marl of Miami,

And scattered the dirt, and spat,

Turning away abruptly, out of respect.



---------------------



Henry James at the Pacific

By Donald Justice

 -- Coronado Beach, California, March, 1905



In a hotel room by the sea, the Master

Sits brooding on the continent he has crossed.

Not that he foresees immediate disaster,

Only a sort of freshness being lost --

Or should he go on calling it Innocence?

The sad-faced monsters of the plains are gone;

Wall Street controls the wilderness. There's an immense

Novel in all this waiting to be done.

But not, not -- sadly enough -- by him. His

talents,

Such as they may be, want a different theme,

Rather more civilized than this, on balance.

For him now always the recurring dream

Is just the mild, dear light of Lamb House falling

Beautifully down the pages of his calling.

--------------------------



Bus Stop

<>By Donald Justice



Lights are burning

In quiet rooms

Where lives go on

Resembling ours.



The quiet lives

That follow us—

These lives we lead

But do not own—



Stand in the rain

So quietly

When we are gone,

So quietly . . .

And the last bus

Comes letting dark

Umbrellas out—

Black flowers, black flowers.



And lives go on.

And lives go on

Like sudden lights

At street corners



Or like the lights

In quiet rooms

Left on for hours,

Burning, burning.

-----------------------------

Anonymous Drawing



By Donald Justice





A delicate young Negro stands

With the reins of a horse clutched loosely in his hands;

So delicate, indeed, that we wonder if he can hold the spirited creature

beside him

Until the master shall arrive to ride him.

Already the animal's nostrils widen with rage or fear.

But if we imagine him snorting, about to rear,

This boy, who should know about such things better than we,

Only stands smiling, passive and ornamental, in a fantastic livery

Of ruffles and puffed breeches,

Watching the artist, apparently, as he sketches.

Meanwhile the petty lord who must have paid

For the artist's trip up from Perugia, for the horse, for the boy, for

everything here, in fact, has been delayed,

Kept too long by his steward, perhaps, discussing

Some business concerning the estate, or fussing

Over the details of his impeccable toilet

With a manservant whose opinion is that any alteration at all would spoil it.

However fast he should come hurrying now

Over this vast greensward, mopping his brow

Clear of the sweat of the fine Renaissance morning, it would be too late:

The artist will have had his revenge for being made to wait,

A revenge not only necessary but right and clever --

Simply to leave him out of the scene forever.

---

A Note on Donald Justice (Source: http://www.interviews-with-poets.com/donald-justice/justice-note.html) Donald Justice was born in Miami, Florida, on August 12th 1925, the only child of Vasco and Mary Ethel Justice (née Cook). Justice attended Allapattah Elementary School, Andrew Jackson High School and the Senior High School in Miami. Then, in the autumn of 1942, he enrolled for a BA in Music at the University of Miami, where he studied for a time with the composer Carl Ruggles. At a certain point, however, Justice decided that he might have more talent as a writer than a composer, and when he took his degree, in 1945, it was not in Music but English. After a year spent working at odd jobs in New York, Justice entered the University of North Carolina – the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, as it is now known – to study for an MA. There he got to know a number of other people who would go on to make their mark as writers, amongst them the novelist Richard Stern, the poet Edgar Bowers, and the short story writer, Jean Ross, whom he married in 1947, the year he took his MA.

Justice accepted a one-year appointment instructing in English at the University of Miami. Then, with the encouragement of Edgar Bowers, who had gone there the year before, he took up the offer of a place to study for a PhD at Stanford University in California, where he hoped to work under the supervision of Yvor Winters. Unfortunately, the head of department refused to allow this, and, mindful of Justice’s teaching load, insisted that he took only one course per semester, thereby condemning him to very slow progress. Frustrated, Justice left Stanford and went back to Florida, where he resumed the life of an instructor at the University of Miami. Early in 1951, the Pandanus Press published a small chapbook of Justice’s work, The Old Bachelor and Other Poems. But if the occasion was cause for celebration, it will have been overshadowed by the announcement that the university was letting all of its English instructors go. Out of work, and unsure what to do next, Justice acted on the advice of friends and applied to study for the PhD in Creative Writing being offered by the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, the oldest institution of its kind in America, founded by Paul Engle in 1937. His application was successful, and in the spring of 1952 Justice joined one of the most distinguished classes ever to pass through the Workshop, his fellow students including Jane Cooper, Henri Coulette, Robert Dana, William Dickey, Philip Levine, W.D. Snodgrass and William Stafford. In the spring of 1954, just two years after his arrival, Justice obtained his PhD, and was promptly awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship in poetry, which made it possible for him to travel to Europe for the first time. After his return, he spent two years as an assistant professor, one at the University of Missouri at Columbia, the other at Hamline University, St Paul, Minnesota. Then, in 1957, he went back to the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he had agreed to take over some of his teaching while Engle was away on leave. This was to have been a temporary appointment, but when Engle returned, he was asked to stay on, and he remained at the Workshop for over ten years. Justice had been publishing poems in many of the country's leading journals – amongst them, Poetry, The New Yorker, Harper's, The Hudson Review, and The Paris Review – and he had been publishing short stories as well – two had been included in O. Henry Prize Stories annual collections – but it wasn't until 1960, when he was thirty-five years old, that Wesleyan University Press published his first full collection, The Summer Anniversaries. It was very well received: 'Mr Justice is an accomplished writer,' wrote Howard Nemerov, 'whose skill is consistently subordinated to an attitude at once serious and unpretentious. Although his manner is not yet fully disengaged from that of certain modern masters, whom he occasionally echoes, his own way of doing things does in general come through, a voice distinct although very quiet, in poems that are delicate and brave among their nostalgias.' In competition with books submitted by forty-seven other publishers, The Summer Anniversaries was chosen by the Academy of American Poets as the Lamont Poetry Selection for 1959. Two small press publications came out in the next few years – A Local Storm in 1963 and Three Poems in 1966 – and so did two edited volumes – The Collected Poems of Weldon Kees in 1960 and Contemporary French Poetry in 1965 – and then, in 1967, the year he left the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Justice's second full collection was published. Night Light was a very different book from its predecessor, but although it drew some negative reviews – William H. Pritchard summed up his reaction by saying that the book was 'almost wholly about literature, often not very exciting literature' – and some of the positive reviews were lazily formulated, Justice will have found the general tenor of the pieces reassuring: 'This is a book to be grateful for,' wrote one reviewer, and most of the others were clearly in agreement. Justice left the Iowa Writers' Workshop in order to take up an Associate Professorship at Syracuse University in New York. The following year – a year in which he was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in poetry, and gave the Elliston lectures at the University of Cincinnati – he was appointed full professor. However, Justice remained at Syracuse University for only three years, accepting a one-year appointment at the University of California at Irvine in 1970, and then, in the autumn of 1971, going back for a third time to Iowa. Two more small press publications came out in the early 1970s – Sixteen Poems in 1970 and From a Notebook in 1972. These were followed by Justice's third full collection, Departures, which was published in 1973, and was another critical success. Irvin Ehrenpreis described its author as a 'profoundly gifted' poet. Richard Howard was no less enthusiastic: '[T]his little book [contains] some of the most assured, elegant and heartbreaking ... verse in our literature so far.' Departures was nominated for the 1973 National Book Award. Justice's Selected Poems was published in 1979, and its jacket bore a ringing endorsement from Anthony Hecht: 'Many admiring poets and a few perceptive critics (Paul Fussell, Jr among them) have paid careful, even studious attention to Donald Justice's poetic skill, which seems able to accomplish anything with an ease that would be almost swagger if it were not so modest of intention. He is, among other things, the supreme heir of Wallace Stevens. His brilliance is never at the service merely of flash and display; it is always subservient to experienced truth, to accuracy, to Justice, the ancient virtue as well as the personal signature. He is one of our finest poets.' Not all of the reviewers were so well-disposed, however. Calvin Bedient described Justice as 'an uncertain talent that has not been turned to much account'; Gerald Burns said that the volume 'reads like a very thin Tennessee Williams'; and Alan Hollinghurst said that the poems, 'formal but fatigués ... create the impression of getting great job satisfaction without actually doing much work.' Still, those who felt like Bedient, Burns and Hollinghurst were in a small minority, and Justice's Selected Poems was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1980. In 1982 Justice returned to the state of his birth to take up a professorship at the University of Florida, Gainsville. Two years later he published Platonic Scripts, which gathered a number of his critical essays and a handful of the interviews he had given since the mid-1960s. Then, in 1987, he published his next full collection, The Sunset Maker, a book whose contents were well described by his old friend Richard Stern in a review for The Chicago Tribune: 'Poems built so finely out of such intricate emotional music shift in the mind from reading. They are the products, if not the barometer, of an extraordinary temperament coupled with enormous verbal and rhythmic skill. No poem here could have been written by anyone but Donald Justice. This is his world, faintly tropical, faintly melancholy, musical, affectionate, a fixity of evanescence. Beautiful as little else.' In 1991, by which time he had written the libretto for Edwin London's opera, The Death of Lincoln, and had co-edited The Collected Poems of Henri Coulette, Justice was awarded the Bollingen Prize, in recognition of a lifetime's achievement in poetry. The following year, disenchanted with Florida, and disaffected with the university, Justice retired and moved back to Iowa City. Since then, he has published a number of books: A Donald Justice Reader (containing poems, a memoir, short stories and critical essays) appeared in 1992, New and Selected Poems and Banjo Dog in 1995, Oblivion (containing critical essays, appreciations and extracts from notebooks) and Orpheus Hesitated Beside the Black River (an English version of his New and Selected Poems) in 1998. He has also co-edited The Comma After Love: Selected Poems of Raeburn Miller (1994) and Joe Bolton's The Last Nostalgia: Poems 1982-1990 (1999). In 1997, Justice was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. He and his wife still live in Iowa City. They have one son, Nathaniel, who was born in 1961. * It is with great sadness that BTL has learnt of the death of Donald Justice on August 6th 2004. "The poems have a sweet and measured gravity that engages us on a level more profound than the one we usually find ourselves on … Reading Justice, one feels keenly that a poem is an act of retrieval - that, as it memorializes, so it revives … Memory and rapture are so closely intertwined that they become a single gesture of sustained regard." - Mark Strand - "His career has never been marred by an insincere or bogus stretch; there is no phase of his work you'd wish he hadn't included … For decades now, Justice has sought to capture the quality of a farflung, subsiding sunlight, and the best of his poems should - like chased metal in a museum case - hold their gleam for a very long while." - Brad Leithauser -