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Did you know there were hundreds of little night moths crowded against the window pane to catch a glimmer of light? It was the scent of a strange perfume, from fallen cocoons, sticky sincerity that made them flee. In this world of protected ruins, in this circular world where people tell and re-tell the same stories, in this world where people forgot that the dyke wouldn't be massive enough to hold back the sea swell; in this world where each and every one would flee in panic in the end; even the old lady sold spun silver birds while she whispered... The tiny, translucent and elegant night moths like freshly picked pumpkin seeds crowded in the corner of that half-open window clinging to the cold glass, light eager, while the vapor filled the room reaching the nostrils of colleagues who didn't recognize each other but intertwining their fingers, waited for someone else's words to atone and explain and bestow meaning to words.

She sits on the mountain that is her home and the landscapes slide away. One goes down and then up to the monastery. One drops away to a winnowing ring and a farmhouse where a girl and her mother are hanging the laundry. There’s a tiny port in the distance where the shore reaches the water. She is numb and clear because of the grieving in that world. She thinks of the bandits and soldiers who return to the places they have destroyed. Who plant trees and build walls and play music in the village square evening after evening, believing the mothers of the boys they killed and the women they raped will eventually come out of the white houses in their black dresses to sit with their children and the old. Will listen to the music with unreadable eyes.

The moon has left the sky, love, The stars are hiding now, And frowning on the world, love, Night bares her sable brow. The snow is on the ground, love, And cold and keen the air is. I’m singing here to you, love; You’re dreaming there in Paris. But this is Nature’s law, love, Though just it may not seem, That men should wake to sing, love; While maidens sleep and dream. Them care may not molest, love, Nor stir them from their slumbers, Though midnight find the swain, love. Still halting o’er his numbers. I watch the rosy dawn, love, Come stealing up the east, While all things round rejoice, love, That Night her reign has ceased. The lark will soon be heard, love, And on his way be winging; When Nature’s poets, wake, love, Why should a man be singing?

Oh pile of white shirts who is coming to breathe in your shapes to carry your numbers to appear what hearts are moving toward their garments here their days what troubles beating between arms you look upward through each other saying nothing has happened and it has gone away and is sleeping having told the same story and we exist from within eyes of the gods you lie on your backs and the wounds are not made the blood has not heard the boat has not turned to stone and the dark wires to the bulb are full of the voice of the unborn

It’s more than silhouettes tonight, every window in the city lit, shades lifted, curtains open. As one suspected, the dark buildings full of lovers, undressing beneath light bulbs, before mirrors. Men & women, men & men, women & women, embracing. Even the loners visible, flickered by single candles, touching places they’ve usually chosen to keep secret. So much nakedness! And the streets empty except for the newsboys moving through shadows, leafless trees snatching underclothes out of wind, the El clattering above the roofs like a strip of blue movie.

France, March 1916. Over the top! The wire’s thin here, unbarbed Plain rusty coils, not staked, and low enough: Full of old tins, though—“When you’re through, all three, Aim quarter left for fifty yards or so, Then straight for that new piece of German wire; See if it’s thick, and listen for a while For sounds of working; don’t run any risks; About an hour; now, over!” And we placed Our hands on the topmost sand-bags, leapt, and stood A second with curved backs, then crept to the wire, Wormed ourselves tinkling through, glanced back, and dropped. The sodden ground was splashed with shallow pools, And tufts of crackling cornstalks, two years old, No man had reaped, and patches of spring grass. Half-seen, as rose and sank the flares, were strewn The wrecks of our attack: the bandoliers, Packs, rifles, bayonets, belts, and haversacks, Shell fragments, and the huge whole forms of shells Shot fruitlessly—and everywhere the dead. Only the dead were always present—present As a vile sickly smell of rottenness; The rustling stubble and the early grass, The slimy pools — the dead men stank through all, Pungent and sharp; as bodies loomed before, And as we passed, they stank: then dulled away To that vague fœtor, all encompassing, Infecting earth and air. They lay, all clothed, Each in some new and piteous attitude That we well marked to guide us back: as he, Outside our wire, that lay on his back and crossed His legs Crusader-wise: I smiled at that, And thought on Elia and his Temple Church. From him, at quarter left, lay a small corpse, Down in a hollow, huddled as in a bed, That one of us put his hand on unawares. Next was a bunch of half a dozen men All blown to bits, an archipelago Of corrupt fragments, vexing to us three, Who had no light to see by, save the flares. On such a trail, so light, for ninety yards We crawled on belly and elbows, till we saw, Instead of lumpish dead before our eyes, The stakes and crosslines of the German wire. We lay in shelter of the last dead man, Ourselves as dead, and heard their shovels ring Turning the earth, then talk and cough at times. A sentry fired and a machine-gun spat; They shot a glare above us, when it fell And spluttered out in the pools of No Man’s Land, We turned and crawled past the remembered dead: Past him and him, and them and him, until, For he lay some way apart, we caught the scent Of the Crusader and slide past his legs, And through the wire and home, and got our rum.

February 3rd The sea with no waves we recognize, with no stations on its route, only water and moon, night after night! My thought goes back to the land, someone else’s land, belonging to the one going through it on trains at night, through the same place at the same hour as before . . . Remote mother, sleeping earth, powerful and faithful arms, the same quiet lap for all —tomb of eternal life with the same decorations freshened— earth, mother, always true to yourself, waiting for the sad gaze of the wandering eyes! My thought goes back to the land, —the olive groves at sunrise— outlined sharply in the white or golden or yellow moonlight, that look forward to the coming back of those humans who are neither its slaves nor its masters, but who love it anyway . . .

I saw within the shadows of the yard the shed and saw the snow upon its roof— an oblong glowing in the moonlit night. I could not rest or close my eyes, although I knew that I must rise early next morning and begin my work again, and begin my work again. That day was lost—that month as well; and year and year for all that I can tell.

Rise, cleanly trust, divided star, And spend that delicate fraud upon the night— A lover’s instance moving mindful air To make its peace in dedicated light Whose look is charnel. Lusters, intent and blind, Give darkness downward with a glow like sheaves— A gleaner’s pittance withered in the bind That keeps the summer godhead of the leaves And bends tremendous evening under it, Doubles its theft within a lonely course Till eye and eye repeat the counterfeit And shape the replenishing mercy at its source. All else were ravage: a demon-gaze of terror: The emblem blackened in the living head, The eye, the image, and the image-bearer Struck to an awe with smiling on the dead. Therefore that bounty which, however false, Tenders survival, and is purely given, And lends the viewless prisms at its pulse To make an easy legendry in heaven. Restore that grace! Indeed, the look is grace That deals this desert providence in air And lifts a deathshead, burning, into place To serve a lover’s faith. Rise, carrion star.

By the blue taper's trembling light, No more I waste the wakeful night, Intent with endless view to pore The schoolmen and the sages o'er: Their books from wisdom widely stray, Or point at best the longest way. I'll seek a readier path, and go Where wisdom's surely taught below. How deep yon azure dyes the sky, Where orbs of gold unnumbered lie, While through their ranks in silver pride The nether crescent seems to glide. The slumb'ring breeze forgets to breathe, The lake is smooth and clear beneath, Where once again the spangled show Descends to meet our eyes below. The grounds, which on the right aspire, In dimness from the view retire: The left presents a place of graves, Whose wall the silent water laves. That steeple guides thy doubtful sight Among the livid gleams of night. There pass, with melancholy state, By all the solemn heaps of fate, And think, as softly-sad you tread Above the venerable dead, "Time was, like thee they life possessed, And time shall be, that thou shalt rest." Those graves, with bending osier bound, That nameless heave the crumpled ground, Quick to the glancing thought disclose Where Toil and Poverty repose. The flat smooth stones that bear a name, The chisel's slender help to fame (Which ere our set of friends decay Their frequent steps may wear away), A middle race of mortals own, Men, half ambitious, all unknown. The marble tombs that rise on high, Whose dead in vaulted arches lie, Whose pillars swell with sculptured stones, Arms, angels, epitaphs and bones, These (all the poor remains of state) Adorn the rich, or praise the great; Who, while on earth in fame they live, Are senseless of the fame they give. Ha! while I gaze, pale Cynthia fades, The bursting earth unveils the shades! All slow and wan, and wrapped with shrouds, They rise in visionary crowds, And all with sober accent cry, "Think, mortal, what it is to die." Now from yon black and fun'ral yew, That bathes the charnel-house with dew, Methinks I hear a voice begin (Ye ravens, cease your croaking din, Ye tolling clocks, no time resound O'er the long lake and midnight ground); It sends a peal of hollow groans, Thus speaking from among the bones. "When men my scythe and darts supply, How great a King of Fears am I! They view me like the last of things: They make, and then they dread, my stings. Fools! if you less provoked your fears, No more my spectre-form appears. Death's but a path that must be trod, If man would ever pass to God; A port of calms, a state of ease From the rough rage of swelling seas. "Why then thy flowing sable stoles, Deep pendant cypress, mourning poles, Loose scarfs to fall athwart thy weeds, Long palls, drawn hearses, covered steeds, And plumes of black, that, as they tread, Nod o'er the scutcheons of the dead? "Nor can the parted body know, Nor wants the soul, these forms of woe. As men who long in prison dwell, With lamps that glimmer round the cell, Whene'er their suffering years are run, Spring forth to greet the glitt'ring sun: Such joy, though far transcending sense, Have pious souls at parting hence. On earth, and in the body placed, A few, and evil, years they waste; But when their chains are cast aside, See the glad scene unfolding wide, Clap the glad wing, and tow'r away, And mingle with the blaze of day."