Acquainted with the Night

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.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say goodbye;
And further still at an unearthly height
On luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

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by Robert Frost, 1928

Ohio & Beyond

Towns pass like pretty girls you wish
you'd left behind, lifting their skirts gentle
against their legs --- Ravenna, Elyria, Vandalia
dark-haired beauties who fling their hair
like girls do when the weather up & shifts.

In Mingo Junction, spring will happen
easily. The first warm night hangs
on the eaves of the dancehall, drops
down to the wooden floorboards, settles
in the avocado vinyl of the front porch swing.

You met a girl here once
in the days when the land rolled back
& fields of coal bloomed forth & glistened.
Everyone was rich for a little while.

She played the jukebox for you here
one shiny night in April, curled her cool hand
around your fist, danced slow with you.
She said,       I found a starfish once in Florida.
Dresses stuck to girls' skins differently back then.
It wasn't all laid bare.

All the way from here to Newfoundland, the ripbop
on the car radio carries you, rises
like an ether, blue & faint on the road.

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by Lucie Brock-Broido

Into the Twilight

Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn,
Come clear of the nets of wrong and right,
Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight,
Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.

Your mother Eire is always young,
Dew ever shining and twilight grey;
Though hope fall from you and love decay,
Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.

Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill:
For there the mystical brotherhood
Of sun and moon and hollow and wood
And river and stream work out their will;

And God stands winding his lonely horn,
And time and the world are ever in flight;
And love is less kind than the grey twilight,
And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn.

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by William Butler Yeats, 1899

Be Still in Haste

How quietly I
begin again

from this moment
looking at the
clock, I start over

so much time has
passed, and is equaled
by whatever
split-second is present

from this
moment this moment
is the first

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by Wendell Berry, 1962

The Way Things Work

is by admitting
or opening away.
This is the simplest form
of current: Blue
moving through blue;
blue through purple;
the objects of desire
opening upon themselves
without us;
the objects of faith.
The way things work
is by solution,
resistance lessened or
increased and taken
advantage of.
The way things work
is that we finally believe
they are there,
common and able
to illustrate themselves.
Wheel, kinetic flow,
rising and falling water,
ingots, levers and keys,
I believe in you,
cylinder lock, pulley,
lifting tackle and
crane lift your small head -
I believe in you -
your head is the horizon to
my hand. I believe
forever in the hooks.
The way things work
is that eventually
something catches.

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by Jorie Graham, 1997