A Living by William Stafford
A Living
William StaffordEven pain you can take, in waves:
call the interval happiness. You can
travel; whatever nags you, you can
change it. You can roll this burden away.
In the pinched bend of your street
you can look back, or ahead, or wait.And there is easy talk, for throwing
back like Annie-Over, or a minuet,
a way to act human in these years the stars
look past. And somewhere around you begins
that lifted road lighted by sunset, offered
again and again, laced where the sky lives:Someday your road.
ABOUT WILLIAM STAFFORD
William Stafford was born in Hutchinson, Kansas, on January 17, 1914. He received a BA and an MA from the University of Kansas and, in 1954, a PhD from the University of Iowa. Among Stafford’s best-known books are An Oregon Message (Perennial Library, 1987); Writing the Australian Crawl: Views on the Writer’s Vocation (University of Michigan Press, 1977); Stories That Could Be True: New and Collected Poems (Harper & Row, 1977); and The Rescued Year (Harper & Row, 1966)…. (more)
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ENDNOTES
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