Darkling

[rejectomorph]

Dark sneaks up on me the way dark does this time of year. I realize I haven't been outside exercising and it's become almost too late. So I go walk around the yard a few times and watch lights come on in other houses and see people moving about in their bright rooms while detail drains from the remainder of the world.

There is no moon for company out here. There's just the fading world and its cooling air, and the cicadas buzzing. Those figures framed briefly in lighted window are like animated mannequins. I am not shopping. I'll have none of them. Out here the sky closes down except for a few small flecks of starlight, and those are like tiny holes in an opaque dome beyond which day continues without us. The world seems like a room full of smaller rooms, a puzzle box.

I think how thoughts such as this remind me how I ought not to leave my exercise for so late in the evening. When dark sneaks up on me this time of year it brings melancholy with it. This year I've already got plenty of that.



Sunday Verse

I think I might have posted this one before, but it probably came to mind because it suits my mood, so here it is again.

The Garden (For Robert Penn Warren)

by Mark Strand


It shines in the garden,
in the white foliage of the chestnut tree,
in the brim of my father's hat
as he walks on the gravel.

In the garden suspended in time
my mother sits in a redwood chair;
light fills the sky,
the folds of her dress,
the roses tangled beside her.

And when my father bends
to whisper in her ear,
when they rise to leave
and the swallows dart
and the moon and stars
have drifted off together, it shines.

Even as you lean over this page,
late and alone, it shines; even now
in the moment before it disappears

Comments

[mistersmearcase.livejournal.com]

What does darkling mean anyway? I understand Vertigo was almost titled "Listen Darkling."

[rejectomorph]

Darkle. I had in mind the adverb form meaning simply "in the dark", but the verb, adjective and noun forms add their resonance, as does Hardy's famous poem.

I'm glad Hitchcock's movie escaped the odd alternate title. It sounds like the name of something that would be made for TV.