Dorothy Parker

Here’s a poem for a Saturday morning by Dorothy Parker (August 22, 1893 – June 7, 1967), American poet, writer, critic, and satirist based in New York; she was best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th-century urban foibles.

I Know I Have Been Happiest

I know I have been happiest at your side;
But what is done, is done, and all’s to be.
And small the good, to linger dolefully,—
Gaily it lived, and gallantly it died.
I will not make you songs of hearts denied,
And you, being man, would have no tears of me,
And should I offer you fidelity,
you’d be, I think, a little terrified.

Yet this the need of woman, this her curse:
To range her little gifts, and give, and give,
Because the throb of giving’s sweet to bear.
To you, who never begged me vows or verse,
My gift shall be my absence, while I live;
But after that, my dear, I cannot swear.

--Dorothy Parker [from “Enough Rope” (1926)