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Jean Valentine
Jean Valentine
The author of many collections of poetry, Jean Valentine has received such honors as the National Book Award, being selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets and the Wallace Stevens Award...
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To the Black Madonna of Chartres

 
by Jean Valentine

Friend or no friend, 
darkness or light, 
vowels or consonants, 
water or dry land,

anything more from you now
is just gravy
—just send me down forgiveness, send me down
bearing myself a black cupful of light.






From Door in the Mountain. Copyright © 2004 by Jean Valentine. Reprinted with permission of Wesleyan University Press.
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