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.