Katie's bookmarks were waiting for me

Yesterday I found a book of poems that we kept on an end table at our old house, and I settled by the fireplace to read it: American's Favorite Poems edited by Robert Pinsky. I noticed a stiff card marking a spot near the back, and when I turned to it I was surprised to find a postcard addressed to Katie for an upcoming college visist on February 18, 2002. She would've been a junior in high school, and this would have been fairly soon after September 11, 2001. The poem it marks is by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Dirge Without Music

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lillies and with Laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,--but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,--
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.