The days move one at a time—
Always at Night—and always in my Direction.²
Night is now falling—and the Behests
Of night may not well be gainsaid.³
The Sun Rises—and
It is a Black Sun!⁴
“A thousand times Good Night!”—
“A thousand times the worse, to want thy Light!”⁵
We live out our short lives of
Long Nights & absent dawns:⁶
We carry whole Calendars
Of black Night in us.⁷
We gain from the Amorous
Dark what the day doth borrow.⁸
Not a wing, not a bird, no wind:
But Night—only the pulsing of Soundlessness …⁹
Wild Nights—Wild Nights! Were I with thee—
Wild Nights should be our luxury!¹⁰
¹ William Blake, Auguries of Innocence
² Charles Wright, If My Glasses Were Better, I Could See Where I’m Headed For
³ Homer tr. Samuel Butler, The Iliad
⁴ C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle
⁵ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
⁶ Philip Levine, The Second Going
⁷ Joanna Klink, Who Lives Where Summer Ends
⁸ John Keats, Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil: A Story from Boccaccio
⁹ Eugene Guillevic tr. Denise Levertov, Heartbeat
¹⁰ Emily Dickinson, Wild Nights!