“I
The calendar is full but the future is blank.
The wires hum the folk-tune of some forgotten land.
Snow-fall on the lead-still sea. Shadows
scrabble on the pier.

II
In the middle of life, death comes
to take your measurements. The visit
is forgotten and life goes on. But the suit
is being sewn on the sly.

” 

 

tomas tranströmer, “black postcards”

From commissars of daylight
Love cannot make us free.
Nights of ungracious darkness
Hang over you and me.
We lie awake together
And hear the clocks strike three.

Our loving cannot exile
The felons but and if.
Yet, being undivided,
Some ways we can contrive
To hold off those besiegers
Who batter round our life:

The thieves of our completeness
Who steal us stone by stone,
The patronage that scowls upon
Our need to be alone,
And all the clever people
Who want us for their own.

The telephone is ringing
And planes and trains depart.
The cocktail party’s forming,
The cruise about to start.
To stay behind is fatal—
Act now, the time is short.

If we refuse the summons
And stand at last alone,
We walk, intact and certain,
As man and woman grown
In the deserted playground
When all the rest have gone.
” “the marriage portion,” by adrienne rich.