Scraps of poetry, remembered over a lifetime, float to the surface: Auden, Jeffers, Neruda, Yeats, Shakespeare: “I am dying, Egypt, dying; only I here importune death awhile, until Of many thousand kisses the poor last I lay up thy lips.” And Edna st Millay:

“Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree, Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one, Yet knows its boughs more silent than before: I cannot say what loves have come and gone, I only know that summer sang in me A little while, that in me sings no more.”