Shortly

[rejectomorph]

Once the moon has gone, the forest is lit by summer starlight and sings with crickets. The deepest darkness now is yet pale enough to reveal paths and bordering shapes, and there is no need for steps to falter. So brief is the night that houses are barely wrapped in its vagueness before they begin to emerge, still silent, into the growing day. There comes an hour when deserted streets and yards are exposed. Nobody stirs. It seems as though the sharp notes of morning bird songs might shatter the town like glass.



Sunday Verse

The Late Hour

by Mark Strand


A man walks toward town,
a slack breeze smelling of earth
and the raw green of trees blows at his back.

He drags the weight of his passion as if nothing were over,
as if the woman, now curled in bed beside her lover,
still cared for him.

She is awake and stares at scars of light
trapped in the panes of glass.
He stands under her window, calling her name;

he calls all night and it makes no difference.
It will happen again, he will come back wherever she is.
Again he will stand outside and imagine

her eyes opening in the dark
and see her rise to the window and peer down.
Again she will lie awake beside her lover

and hear the voice from somewhere in the dark.
Again the late hour, the moon and stars,
the wounds of night that heal without sound,

again the luminous wind of morning that comes before the sun.
And, finally, without warning or desire,
the lonely and the feckless end.