Black fly, black fly

Why have you come                  

Is it my shirt

My new white shirt

 

With buttons of bone

Is it my suit

 

My dark blue suit

Is it because

 

I lie here alone

Under a willow

 

Cold as stone

Black fly, black fly

 

How good you are

To come to me now

 

How good you are

To visit me here

 

Black fly, black fly

To wish me good bye.

 

 

Mark Strand’s honors include the Bollingen Prize, grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award, and fellowships from The Academy of American Poets and the MacArthur Foundation. In 1999 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his collection Blizzard of One.