Dolor

Theodore Roethke (1908 - 1963)


I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paperweight,
All the misery of manila folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of Multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplication of lives and objects.

And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Soft, almost invisible, through the long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.




from

The rainy Day

Longfellow


Into each life some rain must fall
Some days must be dark and dreary




from

A Shropshire Lad

A. E. Houseman (1859-1936)


Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.