Hilda Morley

A cold night crosses our path The world appears very large, very round now       extending far as the moon does It is from the moon this cold travels It is the light of the moon that causes this night reflecting distance in its own light so coldly (from one side of the earth to the other) It is the length of this coldness It is the long distance between two points which are not in a line        now not a straightness       (however straight) but a curve only, silver that is a rock reflecting not metal but a rock accepting distance (a scream in silence where between the two points what touches is a curve around the world (the dance unmoving). new york, 1969

The grey sky, lighter & darker greys, lights between & delicate lavenders also blue-greys in smaller strokes, & swashes of mauve-grey on the Hudson— openings of light to the blue oblong off-center where the door to the warehouse shows— the larger smearings darkening deep into blues So alight that sky, late August, early evening, I had to gasp at it, stand there hardly moving to breathe it,       using whatever my body gave me, at that moment       attending to it, thinking: Turner, he should have seen it, he would have given it back to us, not let it die away And that other evening, walking down Bank Street from marketing, the sky fiery over the river, luminous but hot in its flowering also, rich in color as Venice seen by Guardi—more aflame even, the sky moving in a pulse, its fire breathing in a pulse verging on danger—mane of a lioness affronted. That brilliance—the eye of the lion filled to the lids with flame And his eyes, Turner's, that bright grey eye at seventy-six, "brilliant as the eye of a child" who grew his thumbnail in the shape of an eagle's claw, the better to use it in painting In Kirby Lonsdale, Yorkshire, where Turner first drew mountain-landscapes, I found Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell

This season for us, the Jews— a season of candles, one more on the seven-branched candlestick for the seven days of the week, but let it be seven in the sense of luck in dice, seven of the stars in the constellations: Orion, Aldebaran in the sky lively over Jerusalem Let the fuel last the besieged       such as we are, to nourish us. Let the oil continue for heat, for illumination, flame crouching in the lamp, the glass smoky (December upon us) the light not fail. The air has been mild for days— & the 7 rings through my life despite the 8 of this week— bushes in the doorway of 7 Charles where I lived, 51, crackle with dryness, are bare still. That house with the lucky number brought me luck & misluck, both, like the other that added to 7, out of 4 & 3, that seven underlying the eight of this week, the 8 just over, the 7 just under a third of the years with Stefan: I praise them both today— the lasting oil in the seven-branched candlestick: absence of all fear—the smallest drop of fuel enough to leap from. new york, 1973

Last night tossed in my bed the sound of the rain turned me around, a leaf in a dried gully from side to side, the sound of the rain took me apart,        opened to                 what is it? breath caught in memory of a deep sweetness that sound unceasing delicate,                the wetness running through my body It might be nighttime in a forest hut, the rain constant in little rivulets splashing, at times uncertain— safe in each other's arms, the rain sheltering us       a depth opening bottomless to a terrible sweetness, the small rain shaking us in our bed (the terror) whispering End of a season, wind from the west new york, 1982