The Night Watch - by
Shhh, what did you want to show
that couldn’t wait until the morning?
Was it the moon – because I see it:
the first good bead on a one-bead string
Shhh, what did you want to show
that couldn’t wait until the morning?
Was it the moon – because I see it:
the first good bead on a one-bead string
All houses wherein men have lived and died
Are haunted houses. Through the open doors
The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,
With feet that make no sound upon the floors.
Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth?
After she died, I swear the sky
/ Had the most beautiful of all sunsets,
/ A blush of pink, then red, a glass…
The moon must be sick of being in poems –
/ always gripped by fingers of late honeysuckle,
/ always filtered in the…
Last night, when the moon
slipped into my attic-room
as an oblong of light,
I sensed she’d come to commiserate.
The night is still. The stars are fixed:
we move through phases of the flesh.
In my village where girls dress
In clothes the color of joy
And dance to the slender sound of the drum
The moon walks me home.
I want to carry her into tomorrow.
All the way in this silent calm…
The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
/ In a beautiful pea-green boat,
/ They took some honey, and plenty…
Rags frae the moon and tatters o sun,
/ We’ll fly awa when time is done.
/ Wind for a sark; the sweet yird…
Tonight, I am white and full.
/ My surface is all curves
/ and craters, but you don’t mind.
/ You have travelled alone through the…