I believe you did not have a happy life.
I believe you were cheated.
I believe your best friends were loneliness and misery.
I believe your busiest enemies were anger and depression.
I believe joy was a game you could never play without stumbling.
I believe comfort, though you craved it, was forever a stranger.
I believe music had to be melancholy or not at all.
I believe no trinket, no precious metal, shone so bright as your brightness.
I believe you lay down at last in your coffin none the wiser and unassuaged.
Oh, cold and dreamless under the wind, amoral, reckless peaceful flowers of the hillside.
Poem by Mary Oliver
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry