Poet's Choice By Edward Hirsch

public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last for ever:

I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

(The stanza from Billy Collins's poem "The Blues" appears in his book "The Art of Drowning." University of Pittsburgh Press. Copyright © 1995 by Billy Collins. W. H. Auden's "Funeral Blues" appears under the rubric "Twelve Songs" in his "Collected Poems," edited by Edward Mendelson. Random House. Copyright © 1976, 1991 by The Estate of W. H. Auden. Robert Johnson, excerpt from "Hellhound on My Trail," copyright © 1990 Lehsem 11, LLC/Claud L. Johnson. Reprinted by permission of Music and Media International.)