The Bones of Deer

"...why should I wait ten years yet, having lived sixty-seven, ten

years more or less,

Before I crawl out on a ledge of rock and die snapping, like a wolf

Who has lost its mate?—I am bound by my own thirty-year-old decision:

who drinks the wine

Should take the dregs; even in the bitter lees and sediment

New discovery may lie. The deer in that beautiful place lay down their

bones: I must wear mine."

Robinson Jeffers - The Deer Lay Down Their Bones