Donald Justice

Donald Rodney Justice (August 12, 1925 – August 6, 2004) was an American teacher of writing and poet who won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1980.

Quotes

The Summer Anniversaries (1960)

• Merry the green, the green hill shall be merry.
  Hungry, the owlet shall seek out the mouse
  And Jack his Joan, but they shall never marry

  And snow shall fly, the big flakes fat and furry.
  Lonely, the traveler shall seek out the house,
  And Jack his Joan, but they shall never marry.

  Weary the soldiers go, and come back weary,
  Up a green hill and down the withered hill,
  And Jack from Joan, but they shall never marry.

  • Another Song

Night Light (1967)

• Between the lines it must have hurt
  To see the neighborhood go down,
  Your neighbor in his undershirt
  At dusk come out to mow his lawn.
  • To the Unknown Lady Who Wrote the Letters Found In the Hatbox

Departures (1973)

• 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.
  • Poem

• You neither can nor should understand what it means.
  Listen, it comes without guitar,
  Neither in rags nor in any purple fashion.
  And there is nothing in it to comfort you.
  • Poem