I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils, <br />Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight, <br />All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage, <br />Desolation in immaculate public places, <br />Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard, <br />The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher, <br />Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma, <br />Endless duplicaton of lives and objects. <br />And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions, <br />Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica, <br />Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium, <br />Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows, <br />Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.<br /><br />Theodore Roethke<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/dolor/
