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Mark Strand was born in Summerside, Prince Edward Island, Canada. His collections of poems include: Dark Harbor (1993), The Continuous Life (1990), Selected Poems (1980), The Late Hour (1978), The Story of our Lives (1973), The Sargentville Notebook (1973), Darker (1970), Reasons For Moving (1968), and Sleeping With One Eye Open (1964). He has also published a book of prose, entitled The Monument (1978). His books on artists include William Bailey (1987) and Hopper (1994). His translations include two volumes of the poems of Carlos Drummond de Andrade. He has also published three books for children. He has been the recipient of Fellowships from the Ingram Merrill, Rockefeller, and Guggenheim Foundations and from the National Endowment for the Arts. He has been awarded the Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets (1979), a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Award (1987), the Bollingen Prize (1993), and has served as Poet Laureate of the United States (1990). He is currently the Elliott Coleman Professor of Poetry in the Writing Seminars at the Johns Hopkins University.
Coming To This by Mark Strand
We have done what we wanted.
We have discarded dreams, preferring the heavy industry
of each other, and we have welcomed grief
and called ruin the impossible habit to break.
And now we are here.
The dinner is ready and we cannot eat.
The meat sits in the white lake of its dish.
The wine waits.
Coming to this
has its rewards: nothing is promised, nothing is taken away.
We have no heart or saving grace,
no place to go, no reason to remain.
Source:famouspoetsandpoems.com