For D----, Dead By Her Own Hand

My dear, I wonder if before the end
You ever thought about a children's game--
I'm sure you must have played it too-- in which
You ran along a narrow garden wall
Pretending it to be a mountain ledge
So steep a snowy darkness fell away
On either side to deeps invisible;
And when you felt your balance being lost
You jumped because you feared to fall, and thought
For only an instant: That was when I died.

That was a life ago. And now you've gone,
Who would no longer play the grown-ups' game
Where, balanced on a ledge above the dark,
You go on running and you don't look down,
Not ever jump because you fear to fall.

-- Howard Nemerov (1920-1999), US poet laureate 1963-1964, 1988-1990


Image: Diane Arbus (1923-1971), American photographer and artist, the poet's sister and the subject of this poem, who took her life on this day in 1971.