Music I Heard With You

How Shall We Praise The Magnificence Of The Dead, The Great Man Humbled, The Haughty Brought To Dust?

I'm Not In The Least Southern; I'm Entirely New England.

I Compelled Myself All Through To Write An Exercise In Verse, In A Different Form, Every Day Of The Year. I Turned Out My Page Every Day, Of Some Sort - I Mean I Didn't Give A Damn About The Meaning, I Just Wanted To Master The Form - All The Way From Free Verse, Walt Whitman, To The Most Elaborate Of Villanelles And Ballad Forms. Very Good Training. I've Always Told Everybody Who Has Ever Come To Me That I Thought That Was The First Thing To Do.

Music I Heard With You Was More Than Music, And Bread I Broke With You Was More Than Bread. Now That I Am Without You, All Is Desolate, All That Was Once So Beautiful Is Dead. Your Hands Once Touched This Table And This Silver,and I Have Seen Your Fingers Hold This Glass. These Things Do Not Remember You, Beloved: And Yet Your Touch Upon Them Will Not Pass. For It Was In My Heart You Moved Among Them,and Blessed Them With Your Hands And With Your Eyes.and In My Heart They Will Remember Always: They Knew You Once, O Beautiful And Wise!

I Ascend From Darkness And Depart On The Winds Of Space For I Know Not Where; My Watch Is Wound, A Key Is In My Pocket, And The Sky Is Darkened As I Descend The Stair.