Our new national Poet Laureate has been announced, Donald Hall
I’m disappointed that it’s another white man (updating the stats of my cartoon from April, we now have had 43 Poet Laureates of the United States – 36 of them have been white men) I still support the concept. Here is one of Hall’s best known poems:
Pale gold of the walls, gold
of the centers of daisies, yellow roses
pressing from a clear bowl. All day
we lay on the bed, my hand
stroking the deep
gold of your thighs and your back.
We slept and woke
entering the golden room together,
lay down in it breathing
quickly, then
slowly again,
caressing and dozing, your hand sleepily
touching my hair now.
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.
From Old and New Poems by Donald Hall, published by Ticknor & Fields.
Copyright © 1990 by Donald Hall.