Bus Stop
by Donald Justice
Lights are burning
In quiet rooms
Where lives go on
Resembling ours.
The quiet lives
That follow us—
These lives we lead
But do not own—
Stand in the rain
So quietly
When we are gone,
So quietly . . .
And the last bus
Comes letting dark
Umbrellas out—
Black flowers, black flowers.
And lives go on.
And lives go on
Like sudden lights
At street corners
Or like the lights
In quiet rooms
Left on for hours,
Burning, burning.
*****
This has always been one of my favorite poems. ‘Black flowers, black flowers’ is genius. That one line injects a very artful, accessible visual metaphor… something you can envision specifically, something that grabs your mind… in the middle of an otherwise quiet poem. The repetition speaks volumes… the speaker is noticing all those black flowers, all those many umbrellas. But why? Again, a bit of mystery is no bad thing.
The repetition of phrases in the poem make you think harder about the last two words, ‘Burning, burning.’ Apparently all those ‘quiet lives that follow us,’ may be quiet and bland; but not cold or dead. ‘Burning’ is evocative of something hot, something powered, something maybe a bit dangerous. The word was used once in the first line also… but I didn’t think about it then, the way I think about it in the last line.