Old letters are reproaches, mute petitions
Unlosable in some desk drawer
Or attic box. Bunched in brown folders, or
In packets tied with ribbon, they speak of
Now-jettisoned ambitions
And insecurities which passed for love,
And document not times when we were stronger,
But rather climates favorable to
Illusions not illusions any longer.

Thus they appear to warn us to adjust
Our self-important postures; and
One may, of a warm summer evening, stand
Reading them in a room where gold light falls,
In shafts aswim with dust,
Across a floor to flowery-papered walls;
And as one reads, one may, between the lines,
Construct the features of a former self
Too given to the self and its designs.

Likewise, to return the letters finally
Back to wherever they belong
Is to admit how much of life's gone wrong
Because of vanity and discontent,
And is as well to envy
Those who refuse to hunger for event
And who accept the wisely unbegun,
Just wishing decently to get through life
And trying not to injure anyone.