Not What It's About But Then

[rejectomorph]

While I'm sitting around, the idea of sleep appeals to me more and more. Whatever I'm doing, if it doesn't involve considerable activity, the idea of sleep creeps into my head and from there weighs my eyelids down and slacks my arms. I drop the pencil, my head falls aside, I'm dozing before I know it. I'm not unrested. It's the idea of sleep that pushes me there. Each year it grows stronger or I grow less able to resist it. Tonight I dozed and the day's image came back, the smoke of burning leaves and the crackle they made from being still a bit damp. The gray smoke rising into afternoon light made me think of something I quickly forgot. For a moment I thought the doze might bring it back but no. November is suggestive but often mysterious and obscure like its light, and dusk is always early. The leaves are ash and no longer shades of gold. They will be dug into the soil and return some other year in other forms. I dreamed about it.



Sunday Verse

Nightfall

by Octavio Paz


What sustains it,
half-open, the clarity of nightfall,
the light let loose in the gardens?

All the branches,
conquered by the weight of birds,
lean toward the darkness.

Pure, self-absorbed moments
still gleam
on the fences.

Receiving night,
the groves become
hushed fountains.

A bird falls,
the grass grows dark,
edges blur, lime is black,
the world is less credible.