Old And New Poems Quotes

“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”
― Donald Hall, Old And New Poems: Donald Hall's Finest Short Poetry on Landscape, Love, and Prophecy

“We are all dying
of something, always,
but our degrees of
awareness differ

- from "Tubes”
― Donald Hall, Old And New Poems: Donald Hall's Finest Short Poetry on Landscape, Love, and Prophecy

“Nothing I do will make death disappear
Or 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”
― Donald Hall, Old And New Poems: Donald Hall's Finest Short Poetry on Landscape, Love, and Prophecy

“The tree is burning on the autumn noon
That 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 again
A land or face we loved, yet we are king.

The young are never robbed of innocence
But 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”
― Donald Hall, Old And New Poems: Donald Hall's Finest Short Poetry on Landscape, Love, and Prophecy

“Life is hell but death is worse.

- from "No Deposit”
― Donald Hall, Old And New Poems: Donald Hall's Finest Short Poetry on Landscape, Love, and Prophecy

“When a long-desired
baby is born, what
joy! More happiness
than we find in sex,
more than we take in
success, revenge, or
wealth. But should the same
infant die, would you
measure the horror
on the same rule? Grief
weighs down the seesaw,
joy cannot budget it.”
― Donald Hall, Old And New Poems: Donald Hall's Finest Short Poetry on Landscape, Love, and Prophecy

“We die of habits,
deplorable ones
like merely living:
finally fatal.

- from "Tubes”
― Donald Hall, Old And New Poems: Donald Hall's Finest Short Poetry on Landscape, Love, and Prophecy

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

-from "Exile”
― Donald Hall, Old And New Poems: Donald Hall's Finest Short Poetry on Landscape, Love, and Prophecy

“Death of a part is agony

- from "The Red Branch”
― Donald Hall, Old And New Poems: Donald Hall's Finest Short Poetry on Landscape, Love, and Prophecy

“Love is Like Sounds"

Late snow fell this early morning of spring.
At dawn I rose from bed, restless, and looked
Out of my window, to wonder if there the snow
Fell outside your bedroom, and you watching.

I played my game of solitaire. The cards
Came out the same the third time through the deck.
The game was stuck. I threw the cards together,
And watched the snow that could not do but fall.

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 snow still hangs in the middle of the air.”
― Donald Hall, Old And New Poems: Donald Hall's Finest Short Poetry on Landscape, Love, and Prophecy