i.m. Anthony Hecht

 

“Three flaws, but this comes very near your best.”

I bent to work, wrestling with all his points,

a student taking his professor’s test,

a deacon whom a cardinal anoints?

“You know, you’re young enough to be my son—”

words stashed in my trove of treasured letters.

He thought me young when I was fifty-one

and liked the verses written to my betters.

Propped on a cane, he looked his bow-tied best.

His wife, soon to be left a widow, said,

“He can’t host you, he’s too ill to get dressed.”

I would have gone to kneel beside his bed.

Darkness dims nothing for you:

Night shines forth as day.

For you the two are alike,

The darkness and the light.

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