Donald Hall

“Ox Cart ManIn October of the year,he counts potatoes dug from the brown field,counting the seed, countingthe cellar's portion out,and bags the rest on the cart's floor.He packs wool sheared in April, honeyin combs, linen, leathertanned from deerhide,and vinegar in a barrelhoped by hand at the forge's fire.He walks by his ox's head, ten daysto Portsmouth Market, and sells potatoes,and the bag that carried potatoes,flaxseed, birch brooms, maple sugar, goosefeathers, yarn.When the cart is empty he sells the cart.When the cart is sold he sells the ox,harness and yoke, and walkshome, his pockets heavywith the year's coin for salt and taxes,and at home by fire's light in November coldstitches new harnessfor next year's ox in the barn,and carves the yoke, and saws planksbuilding the cart again.”

“Death of a part is agony- from "The Red Branch”

“Life is hell but death is worse.- from "No Deposit”

“Nothing I do will make death disappearOr let your shudder or your knowledge go.See the world whole, and see it clearly then,A globe of dirt crusted with bones of men.If we walk, we walk on graves.- from "Shudder”

“When a long-desiredbaby is born, whatjoy! More happinessthan we find in sex,more than we take insuccess, revenge, orwealth. But should the sameinfant die, would youmeasure the horroron the same rule? Griefweighs down the seesaw,joy cannot budget it.”

“We die of habits,deplorable oneslike merely living:finally fatal.- from "Tubes”

“We are all dyingof something, always,but our degrees ofawareness differ- from "Tubes”

“When I was nineteen,I told a thirty-year-old man what afool I had been whenI was seventeen.'We were always,' hesaid glancing down, 'afool two years ago.”

“Exiled by death from people we have known,We are reduced again by years, and tryTo call them back and clothe the barren bone,Not to admit that people ever die.-from "Exile”

“The tree is burning on the autumn noonThat builds each year the leaf and bark again.Though frost will strip it raw and barren soon,The rounding season will restore and mend.Yet people are not mended, but go on,Accumulating memory and love.And so the wood we used to know is gone,Because the years have taught us that we move.We have moved on, the Tamburlaines of then,To different Asias of our plundering.And though we sorrow not to know againA land or face we loved, yet we are king.The young are never robbed of innocenceBut given gold of love and memory.We live in wealth whose bounds exceed our sense,And when we die are full of memory.-from "September Ode”

“Love is like sounds, whose last reverberations / Hang on the leaves of strange trees, on mountains / As distant as the curving of the earth, / Where the snow hangs still in the middle of the air.-from "Love is Like Sounds”

“[O]ver the years I travelled to another universe. However alert we are, however much we think we know what will happen, antiquity remains an unknown, unanticipated galaxy. It is alien, and old people are a separate form of life. They have green skin, with two heads that sprout antennae. They can be pleasant, they can be annoying--in the supermarket, these old ladies won't get out of my way--but most important they are permanently other. When we turn eighty, we understand that we are extraterrestrial. If we forget for a moment that we are old, we are reminded when we try to stand up, or when we encounter someone young, who appears to observe green skin, extra heads, and protuberances.”

“Chipmunks jump, andgreensnakes slither.Rather burst thannot be with her.Bluebirds fight, butbears are stronger.We've got fifty years or longer.Hoptoads hop, buthogs are fatter.Nothing else butUs can matter.”

“The pleasure we feel, reading a poem, is our assurance of its integrity.”

“But Blake's voices returned to dictate revisions.”

“I read poems for the pleasure of the mouth. My heart is in my mouth, and the sound of poetry is the way in." ~from an interview in Narrative magazine”

“You think that theirdying is the worstthing that could happen.Then they stay dead.”

“As Henry Moore carvedor modelled his sculpture every day,he strove to surpass Donatello4. and failed, but woke the next morningelated for another try.”

“Opposites are attracted when each one is anxious about its own character.”

“Safe SexIf he and she do not know each other, and feel confidentthey will not meet again; if he avoids affectionate words;if she has grown insensible skin under skin; if they desireonly the tribute of another’s cry; if they employ each otheras revenge on old lovers or families of entitlement and steel—then there will be no betrayals, no letters returned unread,no frenzy, no hurled words of permanent humiliation,no trembling days, no vomit at midnight, no repeatedapparition of a body floating face-down at the pond’s edge”

“Worship is not love.”

“To desire to write poems that endure-we undertake such a goal certain of two things: that in all likelihood we will fail, and if we succeed we will never know it”

“We made in those days tiny identical rooms inside our bodies which the men who uncover our graves will find in a thousand years shining and whole.”

“I want to sleep like the birdsthen wake to write you againwithout hope that you read me.”