"Ink Runs From The Corners Of My Mouth," Mark Strand

Pulitzer-Winning Poet Mark Strand on the Heartbeat of Creative Work and the Artist's Task to Bear Witness to the Universe

WHEN THE VACATION IS OVER FOR GOOD

It will be strange

Knowing at last it couldn’t go on forever,

The certain voice telling us over and over

That nothing would change,

And remembering too,

Because by then it will all be done with, the way

Things were, and how we had wasted time as though

There was nothing to do,

When, in a flash

The weather turned, and the lofty air became

Unbearably heavy, the wind strikingly dumb

And our cities like ash,

And knowing also,

What we never suspected, that it was something like summer

At its most august except that the nights were warmer

And the clouds seemed to glow,

And even then,

Because we will not have changed much, wondering what

Will become of things, and who will be left to do it

All over again,

And somehow trying,

But still unable, to know just what it was

That went so completely wrong, or why it is

We are dying.

More at http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/01/28/mark-strand-creativity/?mc_cid=f2a44c2b67&mc_eid=abb8585559