Night Music

I think of the nightfall all the time.
I think of the dark pine trees
                                                       leaning out of the sky
Backlit by diminishing twilight, then not backlit.
I think of the way the tree frogs pitch
And pull in their summer dance.
I think of how the wind comes in from thousands of miles away.
I think of how the darkness abides.

The world's a slick rock we've got to cross,
The air, as Cavalcanti says, tremulous with light
And everywhere nicked with voices and little outcries.
Whose are they, and who are they,
                                                                their wings horizon edged,
Their bodies as soft as clouds, their skins tattooed and laid bare and
Graffitied with desolation?
Dreams of them enter, like things alive, the rooms where our loves lie
      sleeping.

Listen to what the book says–
Woe to you because of the fire that burns in you, for it is insatiable.
Woe to you because of the wheel that turns in your mind.
This is the way the night comes on,
                                                                 a narrow and shapeless place,
A few rehearsals among the insects, a few stars,
The thing invisible brought to naught, and back among visible things.
This is the way it all ends.

-- Charles Wright A Short History of the Shadow

Charles Wright