Lose something every day.
Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel.
None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch.
And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones.
And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan’t have lied.
It’s evident the art of losing’s not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.