Donald Justice Short Poems

Famous Short Donald Justice Poems. Short poetry by famous poet Donald Justice. A collection of the all-time best Donald Justice short poems

• Donald Justice Poems
• Donald Justice Best Poems

A Birthday Candle  

 Thirty today, I saw
The trees flare briefly like
The candles on a cake,
As the sun went down the sky,
A momentary flash,
Yet there was time to wish

Bus Stop  

 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.

On The Death Of Friends In Childhood  

 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.

A Map Of Love  

 Your face more than others' faces
Maps the half-remembered places
I have come to I while I slept—
Continents a dream had kept
Secret from all waking folk
Till to your face I awoke,
And remembered then the shore,
And the dark interior.

Loves Strategems  

 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 strategems have succeeded,
Nor would have, no,
Not had their eyes been stricken blind,
Hands cut off at the elbow.

Men At Thirty  

 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

To A Ten-Months Child  

 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?