66 Night poems

Lyric night of the lingering Indian Summer, Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing, Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects, Ceaseless, insistent. The grasshopper’s horn, and far-off, high in the maples, The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence Under a moon waning and worn, broken, Tired with summer. Let me remember you, voices of little insects, Weeds in the moonlight, fields that are tangled with asters, Let me remember, soon will the winter be on us, Snow-hushed and heavy. Over my soul murmur your mute benediction, While I gaze, O fields that rest after harvest, As those who part look long in the eyes they lean to, Lest they forget them.

Sleep, love sleep, The night winds sigh, In soft lullaby. The Lark is at rest With the dew on her breast. So close those dear eyes, That borrowed their hue From the heavens so blue, Sleep, love sleep. Sleep, love sleep, The pale moon looks down On the valleys around, The Glow Moth is flying, The South wind is sighing, And I am low lying, With lute deftly strung, To pour out my song, Sleep, love sleep.

I saw my soul at rest upon a day As a bird sleeping in the nest of night, Among soft leaves that give the starlight way To touch its wings but not its eyes with light; So that it knew as one in visions may, And knew not as men waking, of delight. This was the measure of my soul's delight; It had no power of joy to fly by day, Nor part in the large lordship of the light; But in a secret moon-beholden way Had all its will of dreams and pleasant night, And all the love and life that sleepers may. But such life's triumph as men waking may It might not have to feed its faint delight Between the stars by night and sun by day, Shut up with green leaves and a little light; Because its way was as a lost star's way, A world's not wholly known of day or night. All loves and dreams and sounds and gleams of night Made it all music that such minstrels may, And all they had they gave it of delight; But in the full face of the fire of day What place shall be for any starry light, What part of heaven in all the wide sun's way? Yet the soul woke not, sleeping by the way, Watched as a nursling of the large-eyed night, And sought no strength nor knowledge of the day, Nor closer touch conclusive of delight, Nor mightier joy nor truer than dreamers may, Nor more of song than they, nor more of light. For who sleeps once and sees the secret light Whereby sleep shows the soul a fairer way Between the rise and rest of day and night, Shall care no more to fare as all men may, But be his place of pain or of delight, There shall he dwell, beholding night as day. Song, have thy day and take thy fill of light Before the night be fallen across thy way; Sing while he may, man hath no long delight.

Twelve o'clock. Along the reaches of the street Held in a lunar synthesis, Whispering lunar incantations Dissolve the floors of memory And all its clear relations, Its divisions and precisions, Every street lamp that I pass Beats like a fatalistic drum, And through the spaces of the dark Midnight shakes the memory As a madman shakes a dead geranium. Half-past one, The street lamp sputtered, The street lamp muttered, The street lamp said, "Regard that woman Who hesitates towards you in the light of the door Which opens on her like a grin. You see the border of her dress Is torn and stained with sand, And you see the corner of her eye Twists like a crooked pin." The memory throws up high and dry A crowd of twisted things; A twisted branch upon the beach Eaten smooth, and polished As if the world gave up The secret of its skeleton, Stiff and white. A broken spring in a factory yard, Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left Hard and curled and ready to snap. Half-past two, The street lamp said, "Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter, Slips out its tongue And devours a morsel of rancid butter." So the hand of a child, automatic, Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay. I could see nothing behind that child's eye. I have seen eyes in the street Trying to peer through lighted shutters, And a crab one afternoon in a pool, An old crab with barnacles on his back, Gripped the end of a stick which I held him. Half-past three, The lamp sputtered, The lamp muttered in the dark. The lamp hummed: "Regard the moon, La lune ne garde aucune rancune, She winks a feeble eye, She smiles into corners. She smoothes the hair of the grass. The moon has lost her memory. A washed-out smallpox cracks her face, Her hand twists a paper rose, That smells of dust and old Cologne, She is alone With all the old nocturnal smells That cross and cross across her brain." The reminiscence comes Of sunless dry geraniums And dust in crevices, Smells of chestnuts in the streets, And female smells in shuttered rooms, And cigarettes in corridors And cocktail smells in bars. The lamp said, "Four o'clock, Here is the number on the door. Memory! You have the key, The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair, Mount. The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall, Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life." The last twist of the knife.

On nights when the moon seems impenetrable— a locked porthole to space; when the householder bars his windows and doors, and his dog lies until dawn, one jeweled eye open; when the maiden sleeps with her rosy knees sealed tightly together, on such nights the safecracker sets to work. Axe . . . Chisel . . . Nitroglycerin . . . Within the vault lie forty thousand tons of gold; the heaped up spoils of Ali Baba's cave; the secrets of the molecule. He sands his fingertips to feel the subtle vibrations of wheel lining up, just so, with wheel. His toolmarks are his fingerprints. And now a crack appears on the side of the egg, a single fault line, and within: the golden yolk just waiting. A kind of wind . . . a door flies open . . . a glitter of forsythia forced out of the branch. With smoothest fingertips you touch the locked cage of my ribs . . . just so. My knees fall open. And Cleopatra smiles, whose own Egyptians first invented the lock.

Without even leaving one’s door, One can know the whole world. —Laozi The rumble of the night sounds even in the bright daylight of morning. Life blooms amid the Ten Thousand Things, but does not bloom amid the Ten Thousand Things. Shrivel-eyed I wake up and tend to the One here and now, clamoring to be let out. Down with the gate, out with the boy, to the rooms of life’s necessities, first to void and next to fill. The Order is only order which is disorder, the only Disorder is the disorder that is order. We usher ourselves, each in our own way, back down the way for various brushings, combings, other groomings. Each in our own way we urge the other toward some kind of growth: one to assume, the other to renounce; one to grow larger, the other to grow smaller, thereby growing larger. Words do not work, and when they do not, other words might. This makes more sense than it seems, works more often than it doesn’t, except when it really doesn’t, and then that disorder creeps back in. In five minutes, a different challenge. In five hours, a different One. Six more hours, the One is rubbing eyes, untangled like a dragon, shucked and undone like an oyster. The night slowly rolls abed and the words form stories form sleep, the sleep of the Ten Thousand Things, the sleep that will echo the next day in the night’s rumbling sounds, in the bright light of morning.

As I sit here in the quiet Summer night, Suddenly, from the distant road, there comes The grind and rush of an electric car. And, from still farther off, An engine puffs sharply, Followed by the drawn-out shunting scrape of a freight train. These are the sounds that men make In the long business of living. They will always make such sounds, Years after I am dead and cannot hear them. Sitting here in the Summer night, I think of my death. What will it be like for you then? You will see my chair With its bright chintz covering Standing in the afternoon sunshine, As now. You will see my narrow table At which I have written so many hours. My dogs will push their noses into your hand, And ask—ask— Clinging to you with puzzled eyes. The old house will still be here, The old house which has known me since the beginning. The walls which have watched me while I played: Soldiers, marbles, paper-dolls, Which have protected me and my books. The front-door will gaze down among the old trees Where, as a child, I hunted ghosts and Indians; It will look out on the wide gravel sweep Where I rolled my hoop, And at the rhododendron bushes Where I caught black-spotted butterflies. The old house will guard you, As I have done. Its walls and rooms will hold you, And I shall whisper my thoughts and fancies As always, From the pages of my books. You will sit here, some quiet Summer night, Listening to the puffing trains, But you will not be lonely, For these things are a part of me. And my love will go on speaking to you Through the chairs, and the tables, and the pictures, As it does now through my voice, And the quick, necessary touch of my hand.

To-night again the moon’s white mat Stretches across the dormitory floor While outside, like an evil cat The pion prowls down the dark corridor, Planning, I know, to pounce on me, in spite For getting leave to sleep in town last night. But it was none of us who made that noise, Only the old brown owl that hoots and flies Out of the ivy—he will say it was us boys— Seigneur mon Dieu: the sacré soul of spies! He would like to catch each dream that lies Hidden behind our sleepy eyes: Their dream? But mine—it is the moon and the wood that sees; All my long life how I shall hate the trees! In the Place d’Armes the dusty planes, all Summer through, Dozed with the market women in the sun and scarcely stirred To see the quiet things that crossed the Square—, A tiny funeral, the flying shadow of a bird, The hump-backed barber Célestin Lemaire, Old Madame Michel in her three-wheeled chair, And filing past to Vespers, two and two, The demoiselles of the pensionnat Towed like a ship through the harbour bar, Safe into port, where le petit Jésus Perhaps makes nothing of the look they shot at you: Si, c ’ est défendu, mais que voulez-vous? It was the sun. The sunshine weaves A pattern on dull stones: the sunshine leaves The portraiture of dreams upon the eyes Before it dies: All Summer through The dust hung white upon the drowsy planes Till suddenly they woke with the Autumn rains. It is not only the little boys Who have hardly got away from toys, But I, who am seventeen next year, Some nights, in bed, have grown cold to hear That lonely passion of the rain Which makes you think of being dead, And of somewhere living to lay your head As if you were a child again, Crying for one thing, known and near Your empty heart, to still the hunger and the fear That pelts and beats with it against the pane. But I remember smiling too At all the sun’s soft tricks and those Autumn dreads In winter time, when the grey light broke slowly through The frosted window-lace to drag us shivering from our beds. And when at dusk the singing wind swung down Straight from the stars to the dark country roads Beyond the twinkling town, Striking the leafless poplar boughs as he went by, Like some poor, stray dog by the wayside lying dead, We left behind us the old world of dread, I and the wind as we strode whistling on under the Winter sky. And then in Spring for three days came the Fair Just as the planes were starting into bud Above the caravans: you saw the dancing bear Pass on his chain; and heard the jingle and the thud. Only four days ago They let you out of this dull show To slither down the montagne russe and chaff the man à la tête de veau Hit, slick, the bull's eye at the tir, Spin round and round till your head went queer On the porcs-roulants.Oh! là là! fête! Va pour du vin, et le tête-a-tête With the girl who sugars the gaufres! Pauvrette, How thin she was! but she smiled, you bet, As she took your tip—“One does not forget The good days, Monsieur”. Said with a grace, But sacrebleu: what a ghost of a face! And no fun too for the demoiselles Of the pensionnat, who were hurried past, With their “Oh, que c’est beau—Ah, qu’elle est belle!” A lap-dog’s life from first to last! ; The good nights are not made for sleep, nor the good days for dreaming in, And at the end in the big Circus tent we sat and shook and stewed like sin! Some children there had got—but where? Sent from the south, perhaps—a red bouquet Of roses, sweetening the fetid air With scent from gardens by some far away blue bay. They threw one at the dancing bear; The white clown caught it. From St. Rémy’s tower The deep, slow bell tolled out the hour; The black clown, with his dirty grin Lay, sprawling in the dust, as She rode in. She stood on a white horse—and suddenly you saw the bend Of a far-off road at dawn, with knights riding by, A field of spears—and then the gallant day Go out in storm, with ragged clouds low down, sullen and grey Against red heavens: wild and awful, such a sky As witnesses against you at the end Of a great battle; bugles blowing, blood and dust— The old Morte d’Arthur, fight you must—. It died in anger. But it was not death That had you by the throat, stopping your breath. She looked like Victory. She rode my way. She laughed at the black clown and then she flew A bird above us, on the wing Of her white arms; and you saw through A rent in the old tent, a patch of sky With one dim star. She flew, but not so high— And then she did not fly; She stood in the bright moonlight at the door Of a strange room, she threw her slippers on the floor— Again, again You heard the patter of the rain, The starving rain—it was this Thing, Summer was this, the gold mist in your eyes;— Oh God! it dies, But after death—, To-night the splendour and the sting Blows back and catches at your breath, The smell of beasts, the smell of dust, the scent of all the roses in the world, the sea, the Spring, The beat of drums, the pad of hoofs, music, the dream, the dream, the Enchanted Thing! At first you scarcely saw her face, You knew the maddening feet were there, What called was that half-hidden, white unrest To which now and then she pressed Her finger-tips; but as she slackened pace And turned and looked at you it grew quite bare: There was not anything you did not dare:— Like trumpeters the hours passed until the last day of the Fair. In the Place d’Armes all afternoon The building birds had sung “Soon, soon”, The shuttered streets slept sound that night, It was full moon: The path into the wood was almost white, The trees were very still and seemed to stare: Not far before your soul the Dream flits on, But when you touch it, it is gone And quite alone your soul stands there. Mother of Christ, no one has seen your eyes: how can men pray Even unto you? There were only wolves’ eyes in the wood— My Mother is a woman too: Nothing is true that is not good, With that quick smile of hers, I have heard her say;— I wish I had gone back home to-day; I should have watched the light that so gently dies From our high window, in the Paris skies, The long, straight chain Of lamps hung out along the Seine: I would have turned to her and let the rain Beat on her breast as it does against the pane;— Nothing will be the same again;— There is something strange in my little Mother’s eyes, There is something new in the old heavenly air of Spring— The smell of beasts, the smell of dust—The Enchanted Thing! All my life long I shall see moonlight on the fern And the black trunks of trees. Only the hair Of any woman can belong to God. The stalks are cruelly broken where we trod, There had been violets there, I shall not care As I used to do when I see the bracken burn.

By living late, and sleeping late, we miss the moment when the bats come home to roost— when crooked shadows flit in jagged loops that seem to seek the chimney, seem to miss, then somehow disappear into the eaves; and they (the bats) tuck wing to fur to wing in crevices and roof-beam beveling, doze through our nearly diametric lives, invisible as brown on brown—until today, wakened by dreams, I caught a slight, compelling corner-glimpse in gray first light, of sudden motion in the mostly still new dawn; and drawn, I rose to see the flight: our dark companions exiting the night.

Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night, Brother to Death, in silent darkness born: Relieve my languish, and restore the light, With dark forgetting of my cares, return; And let the day be time enough to mourn The shipwreck of my ill-adventur'd youth: Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn, Without the torment of the night's untruth. Cease dreams, th' imagery of our day-desires, To model forth the passions of the morrow; Never let rising sun approve you liars, To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow. Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain; And never wake to feel the day's disdain.