About Linda Pastan

To learn more about Linda Pastan and her work, please visit:
http://books.wwnorton.com/books/Author.aspx?id=6578

Here is one of Linda's poems:

What We Want


What we want 
is never simple. 
We move among the things 
we thought we wanted: 
a face, a room, an open book
and these things bear our names-- 
now they want us. 
But what we want appears 
in dreams, wearing disguises. 
We fall past, 
holding out our arms 
and in the morning 
our arms ache. 
We don't remember the dream, 
but the dream remembers us. 
It is there all day 
as an animal is there 
under the table, 
as the stars are there 
even in full sun.

Linda Pastan
in Carnival Evening, published by Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
 

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