A Bitterness

Mary Oliver

I believe you did not have a happy life.

I believe you were cheated.

I believe your best friends were loneliness and misery,

I believe your busiest enemies were anger and depression.

I believe joy was a game you could never play without stumbling.

I believe comfort, though you craved it, was forever a stranger.

I believe music had to be melancholy or not at all.

I believe no trinket, no precious metal, shone so bright as your bitterness.

I believe you lay down at last in your coffin none the wiser and unassuaged.

Oh, cold and dreamless under the wild, amoral, reckless, peaceful flowers of the hillsides.