RIP Louis Simpson

Quoted in the NYT obit by Mervyn Rothstein:

All you really know is given

at moments when you're seeing

and listening.

Being in love

is a great help.

Oh yes, but keep a dog.

- "A Farewell to His Muse"

And from Contemporary American Poetry (ed. Donald Hall, Penguin, 1962):

All that grave weight of America
Cancelled! Like Greece and Rome.
The future in ruins!
The castles, the prisons, the cathedrals
Unbuilding, and roses
Blossoming from the stones that are not there . . .

The clouds are lifting from the high Sierras,
The Bay mists clearing;
And the angel in the gate, the flowering plum,
Dances like Italy, imagining red.

- "Walt Whitman at Bear Mountain"