( via via @enniusredloeb.bsky.social / via )

"As the immense correspondence wound on, Keeler agreed to have his wife write substitute poems to order; The Riddle of the Traveling Skull appeared later that year, sans Millay.

Except in England!

Paul Collins, who edited Skull for its republication two years ago under his Collins Library imprint at McSweeney’s, discovered that Keeler’s British publishers, Ward Lock, apparently didn’t get the memo—and so the book’s first U.K. edition has the Millay sonnet in all its anonymous glory." (via @harryskeeler.bsky.social)

"Dim is the rumour of a common fight,
Where host meets host, and many names are sunk;
But of a single combat fame speaks clear."

--from "Sohrab and Rustum"

Acquainted with the Night.

"Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go,—so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, 'There is no memory of him here!'
And so stand stricken, so remembering him."

--Edna St Vincent Millay