Daniel Mark Epstein Poems

After Victor Hugo


Death and Beauty, see how these goddesses cast
So much light and shade, a wise man might say
They were sisters, both bountiful, frightful, vast,
...

What was I looking for in that room
Crowded with old books, shelves so full,
It seemed they could not hold another title,
...

Time should be heard as well as seen,
Says the clockmaker, carving a cuckoo bird.
...

I watched the miles, I saw my life go by,
A drumbeat of bare trees and frozen ponds,
Forlorn stations, ruined factories.
...

Of the butterfly-bush, whose purple flowers
The monarch and the swallowtail
Sipped in August, near my windowpane
...