Mail Call
The letters always just evade the hand
One skates like a stone into a beam, falls like a bird.
Surely the past from which the letters rise
Is waiting in the future, past the graves?
The soldiers are all haunted by their lives.
Their claims upon their kind are paid in paper
That established a presence, like a smell.
In letters and in dreams they see the world.
They are waiting: and the years contract
To an empty hand, to one unuttered sound —
The soldier simply wishes for his name
Randall Jarrell
Born: 6 May 1914, Tennessee, USA
Nationality: American
Died: 14 October 1965, North Carolina, USA
Jarrell was a literary critic, children’s author, essayist, novelist, and poet. He was the 11th Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress. Jarrell received the Guggenheim Fellowship award for 1947-48, and the National Book Award for Poetry in 1961
Jezzie G 