Let’s go for a walk at sunset.
We’ll watch the snow blaze,
burn into night.
I’ve been waiting for night
to erase the meadow.
When the pictures are lost,
I can close my eyes,
I can vanish far
into sleep—where shattered
friends are waiting.
Their shaking hands reach
across the snow.
I run after one and cry—
leave me alone. He turns,
stares, opens his mouth
and can’t speak.
The day my father died
I went for a walk.
The cold leaves crashed
onto the lawn and flared.
His eyes flared. Look—
the sky is flaring. That’s it:
we’re finished with day.
At last I can curl
into myself
—as the snow keeps glowing,
those hands are reaching . . .
I heard the whispers: he’s gone,
leave him alone.
I stroked his hand for hours.
I don’t know how to stop.
—Kathryn Levy
“Waiting for Night” reprinted by permission from Losing the Moon
I just can’t staaaaand people who are so well-connected they actually know how to get permission, and so polite they bother to ask for it.
When I was learning German, I liked the word Polier because it sounded like someone who is always polite. This association faded when I found out it means “foreman”.
Grumbly: what about polisson?
Heh. That’s a naughtycal term.
Can we ever stop ourselves from thinking of our dead father every so often, each time with a pinch of regret?
Why would anyone want to stop doing that ?
Maybe some of us are more patient with their perplexities than others are.
That’s a perfect poem for me, because of the season here. Thank you, Language; i love it.
From an NYRB piece by Dan Chiasson on Wallace Stevens:
There should be no extra space in that first stanza, but for the life of me I can’t get rid of it without running the second line into the first. I’d challenge Hat to do it, but I’m done challenging around here for a few days at least.
Close the two lines tightly together, then insert {br} (but with angle brackets instead) between them. I always do that within blockquotes, or whenever else the layout is skittish.
[Slips back to his easy chair.]
Bougon, it’s not so much a matter of wanting or not wanting. However, one would imagine that over the years these things (say the souvenirs, or the feeling of absence if you will) would slowly fade away. You think they do, until they suddenly flash back. And it doesn’t matter, it seems, whether you were close to each other or not.
Farewell to an idea… Mother’s face
would have been better.
From a poet’s point of view, I believe “the mother” in the context of that glorious poem of Stevens makes the language more alive and, paradoxically, more particular. One searches for honesty and life in the words. And every good poem creates its own world with its distinctive requirements. “Enter the kingdom of words as if you were deaf.”–Carlos Drummond de Andrade, from “Looking for Poetry,” tr. Mark Strand
I defer to you. On the other hand, I’ve always liked John Lennon’s “Mother you had me, but I didn’t have you”.
Never had you.
This is like the Marshal McLuhan scene in Annie Hall.