Richard Hugo Excerpt

...Today, I am certain,
for all my terrible mistakes I did the right thing
to love places and scenes in my innocent way and to spend
my life writing poems, to receive like a woman
the world in its enduring decay and to tell
that world like a man that I am not afraid to weep
at the sadness, the ongoing day that is draining our life
and is life. Sorry. Got carried away. But you know, Bob, how
in the smoky recess of bars all over the world, a man
will suddenly dance because music, a juke box, a Greek
taverna band, moves him and how when he dances we
applaud and cry go. That's nobility of blood, a recognition
by those who matter that in special moments
we are together facing the brute descent of the sun
and that cold brittle star we know already burned out.

- Richard Hugo, "Letter to Peterson from Pike Place Market"