A Bitterness

Mary Oliver

I believe you did not have a happy life.
I believe you were cheated.
I believe your best friends were loneliness and misery,
I believe your busiest enemies were anger and depression.
I believe joy was a game you could never play without stumbling.
I believe comfort, though you craved it, was forever a stranger.
I believe music had to be melancholy or not at all.
I believe no trinket, no precious metal, shone so bright as
 your bitterness.
I believe you lay down at last in your coffin none the wiser
 and unassuaged.
Oh, cold and dreamless under the wild, amoral, reckless, peaceful
 flowers of the hillsides.

University of Virginia Virginia Quarterly Review
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University of Virginia
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