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"Envelope"

By Dana GoodyearPosted Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2004, at 11:56 AM ET

Listen to Dana Goodyear reading this poem.

I got one from the widow,
no note, just a key.
I sent one to the widower
and it arrived empty.
He got one from a friend
already dead in '43,
then came home to deliver
six thousand boom babies.

I came to you too late,
too little, too ungenerously.
Your heart was bloody full
when I begged it to take care of me.



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Dana Goodyear is an editor at The New Yorker.
Click here to visit Robert Pinsky's Favorite Poem Project site.


To submit poetry to Slate, send up to five poems and a self-addressed, stamped envelope to: Robert Pinsky, Slate Magazine, Boston University, 236 Bay State Road, Boston, MA, 02215.
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