More from Me

May lives for June and June for July.

One day dies before the next.

Why ask the day for its name?

Why trouble yourself for a number?

Your questions won’t stop the train.

Day speaks to night and night to day.

All your days are weather—

cold morning and you dream

of archipelagos, Wide Sargasso,

blazing Lesbos; hot afternoon

and you love the fog over the Charles—

gray, wet, mute. Though you

are eighty years from the child

who walked by the river

and never asked how cold the current,

don’t ask now. And since you’re

learning to be quiet, try not to ask

why we are here—I mean our kind,

which Plato named featherless biped.

Why insist on answers like a tough cop?

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The John and Mim Poems is a portrait of a marriage and Miriam Levine’s gift to you.