Edna St. Vincent Millay
If I should learn in some quite casual way
If I should learn in some quite casual way,
That you were gone, not to return again–
Read from the back-page of a paper, say,
Held by a neighbor in a subway train,
How at the corner of this avenue
And such a street (so are the papers filled)
A hurrying man, who happened to be you,
At noon to-day had happened to be killed–
I should not cry aloud–I could not cry
Aloud, or wring my hands in such a place–
I should but watch the station lights rush by
With a more careful interest on my face;
Or raise my eyes and read with greater care
Where to store furs and how to treat the hair.
Edna St. Vincent Millay, Collected Poems Edna St.,Harper & Row, 1956.