Anne Porter was born on November 6, 1911. Her collections include Living Things: Collected Poems (Zoland Books, 2006), An Altogether Different Language: Poems 1934-1994 (Zoland Books, 1994) and The Birds of Passage (Groundwater Press, 1989). Porter died on October 10, 2011.
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A Short Testament
Whatever harm I may have done In all my life in all your wide creation creation If I cannot repair it I beg you to repair it, And then there are all the wounded The poor the deaf the lonely and the old Whom I have roughly dismissed As if I were not one of them. Where I have wronged them by it And cannot make amends I ask you To comfort them to overflowing, And where there are lives I may have withered around me, Or lives of strangers far or near That I've destroyed in blind complicity, And if I cannot find them Or have no way to serve them, Remember them. I beg you to remember them When winter is over And all your unimaginable promises Burst into song on death's bare branches.
From Living Things by Anne Porter, published by Zoland Books, an imprint of Steerforth Press of Hanover, New Hampshire. Copyright © 2006 by Anne Porter. All rights reserved.
From Living Things by Anne Porter, published by Zoland Books, an imprint of Steerforth Press of Hanover, New Hampshire. Copyright © 2006 by Anne Porter. All rights reserved.
Anne Porter
Anne Porter was born on November 6, 1911. Her collections include Living Things: Collected Poems (Zoland Books, 2006), An Altogether Different Language: Poems 1934-1994 (Zoland Books, 1994) and The Birds of Passage (Groundwater Press, 1989). Porter died on October 10, 2011.