Poems

[1]

"Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like
his.
--Flying at Night, Ted Koser 1939

[2]


At night the states
I forget them or I wish I was there
in that one under the
Stars. It smells like June in this night
so sweet like air.
I may have decided that the
States are not that tired
Or I have thought so. I have
thought that. (...)

-- At Night the States, Alice Notley 2006

[3]

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example,'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance. (...)

-- Tonight I Can Write (The Saddest Lines), Pablo Neruda 1924

[4]
I began to see things in parts again,
segments, a pen drawn against the skin
to show where to cut, lamppost through the stained glass
with its etchings of light against the wall —
it was the middle of the night. It was something we would tell no one:
The hospital roads with standing water, I drove quickly through,
saying, you won’t have to stay. (...)

Breaking Across Us Now, Katie Ford 2010

[5] (...) The sky whitens, goes on and on.
Fields wrinkle into rows
of cotton, go on and on.
Night like a fling of crows
disperses and is gone.

What song, what home,
what calm or one clarity
can I not quite come to,
never quite see:
this field, this sky, this tree.

Hard Night, Christian Wimian 2005

[6] (...) So when my feeble sun of life burns out,
And sounded is the hour for my long sleep,
I shall, full weary of the feverish light,
Welcome the darkness without fear or doubt,
And heavy-lidded, I shall softly creep
Into the quiet bosom of the Night.

Mother Night, James Weldon 1922

[7] 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. (...)

Rhapsody on a Windy Night, T.S. Eliot 1920

[8] (...) And yet, it tasted, like them all,
The Figures I have seen
Set orderly, for Burial,
Reminded me, of mine—

As if my life were shaven,
And fitted to a frame,
And could not breathe without a key,
And ‘twas like Midnight, some—

When everything that ticked—has stopped—
And Space stares all around—
Or Grisly frosts—first Autumn morns,
Repeal the Beating Ground—

But, most, like Chaos—Stopless—cool—
Without a Chance, or Spar—
Or even a Report of Land—
To justify—Despair.

It was not Death, for I stood up (510), Emily Dickinson 1891

[9]

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light. (...)

Acquainted with the Night, Robert Frost 1928

[10]

I had not known before
Forever was so long a word.
The slow stroke of the clock of time
I had not heard. (...)

Forever, Paul Laurence Dunbar 1913