blue is not always serene

The night attendant, a B.U. sophomore,

rouses from the mare’s-nest of his drowsy head

propped on 'The Meaning of Meaning'.

He catwalks down our corridor.

Azure day

makes my agonized blue window bleaker.

Crows maunder on the petrified fairway.

Absence! My heart grows tense

as though a harpoon were sparring for the kill.

(This is the house for the “mentally ill.”)

from Waking in the Blue, by Robert Lowell

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