a poem by Mary Oliver

[Frances Bolton (PHI)]

>
>A BITTERNESS
>
>I believe you did not have a happy life.
>I believe you were cheated.
>I believe your best friends were loneliness
>and misery.
>I believe your busiest enemies were anger
>and depression.
>I believe joy was a game you could never
>play without stumbling.
>I believe comfort, though you craved it, was forever a stranger.
>I believe music had to melancholy or not at all.
>I believe no trinket, no precious metal, shone so bright as your
>bitterness.
>I believe you  lay down at last none  the wiser and unassuaged.
>Oh, cold and dreamless under wild, amoral, reckless, peaceful flowers of
>the hillsides.
>