A POEM FOR MOIRA.

This is from Dark World, a 1974 book by one of my favorite American poets, Hayden Carruth (also editor of my favorite American anthology, The Voice That Is Great Within Us); Dark World has an epigraph from Rabbi Baruch of Mezbizh: “What a good and bright world this is if we do not lose our hearts to it, but what a dark world if we do!”

STEPPING BACKWARD
I waken and
   lean and look out
      to see the darkness
flee,
   sunken westward
      over curving earth,
departed
   like the long ocean
      running in tide
so fast and far
   it can never return
      or darken
this wide shore.
The last green star
   dies
      and the trees
lean in their green leaves
   westward
      as if in yearning
and then they straighten.
I rise
   from my window
      thinking now
the new words I must say
   as I step backward
      into day.

Comments

  1. I wasn’t able to comment before this, otherwise I would have said….Thank you! in your comments.
    And wow, great new site, man! It’s so pretty and I’m so jealous!

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