Last Evening: At the Piano, by Donald Justice

And night and far to go--

For hours the convoys had rolled by

Like storm clouds in a troubled sky;

He’d gone on playing, though,

And raised his eyes to hers,

Which had become his mirror now,

So filled were they with his clenched brow,

And the pain to come, or worse;

And then the image blurred.

She stood at the window in the gloom

And looked back through the fading room--

Outside, a fresh wind stirred--

And noticed across a chair

The officer’s jacket he had flung

There earlier; and now it hung

Like the coats scarecrows wear

And which the bird-shadows flee and scatter from;

Or like the skin of some great battle drum.

From “New and Selected Poems” by Donald Justice. (Knopf: $25; 177 pp.) 1995 Reprinted by permission.