Here let thy clemency, Persephone, hold firm,
Do thou, Pluto, bring here no greater harshness.
So many thousand beauties are gone down to Avernus
Ye might let one remain above with us.
“I’ve always been a refusenik, beginning with refusing the suburb that I grew up in, refusing the kind of work that was provided for me as a kind of fate, refusing the war in Vietnam, refusing the beginnings of a plastic corporate culture.”