Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like
his.

I heard the trailing garments of the Night
     Sweep through her marble halls!
I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light
     From the celestial walls!

I felt her presence, by its spell of might,
     Stoop o'er me from above;
The calm, majestic presence of the Night,
     As of the one I love.

I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight,
     The manifold, soft chimes,
That fill the haunted chambers of the Night,
     Like some old poet's rhymes.

From the cool cisterns of the midnight air
     My spirit drank repose;
The fountain of perpetual peace flows there,—
     From those deep cisterns flows.

O holy Night! from thee I learn to bear
     What man has borne before!
Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care
     And they complain no more.

Peace! Peace! Orestes-like I breathe this prayer!
     Descend with broad-winged flight,
The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair,
     The best-beloved Night!

The gray sea and the long black land; 
And the yellow half-moon large and low: 
And the startled little waves that leap 
In fiery ringlets from their sleep, 
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand. 

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach; 
Three fields to cross till a farm appears; 
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch 
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, through joys and fears, 
Than the two hearts beating each to each!

In the wild soft summer darkness 
How many and many a night we two together 
Sat in the park and watched the Hudson 
Wearing her lights like golden spangles 
Glinting on black satin. 
The rail along the curving pathway 
Was low in a happy place to let us cross, 
And down the hill a tree that dripped with bloom 
Sheltered us, 
While your kisses and the flowers, 
Falling, falling, 
Tangled in my hair.... 

The frail white stars moved slowly over the sky. 

And now, far off 
In the fragrant darkness 
The tree is tremulous again with bloom 
For June comes back. 

To-night what girl 
Dreamily before her mirror shakes from her hair 
This year's blossoms, clinging to its coils?

Bend low again, night of summer stars.
So near you are, sky of summer stars, 
So near, a long-arm man can pick off stars, 
Pick off what he wants in the sky bowl, 
So near you are, summer stars, 
So near, strumming, strumming, 
                So lazy and hum-strumming.

Nasal intonations of light
and clicking tongues. . .
publicity of windows 
stoning me with pent-up cries 
smells of abattoirs. . . 
smells of long-dead meat. 

Some day-end—
while the sand is yet cozy as a blanket 
off the warm body of a squaw, 
And the jaguars are out to kill. . .
with a blue-black night coming on 
and a painted cloud 
stalking the first star—
I shall go alone into the Silence. . .
the coiled Silence. . .
Where a cry can run only a little way 
and waver and dwindle 
and be lost. 

And there. . .
where tiny antlers clinch and strain 
as life grapples in a million avid points, 
and threshing things 
strike and die, 
Letting their hate live on 
in the spreading purple of a wound. . .
I too 
will make covert of a crevice in the night, 
and turn and watch. . .
nose at the cleft’s edge. 

Staring at the stars,
I imagine you
vanished and dispersed
in that unreachable
clarity of light.
They glisten, sharp and cold,
vast distances apart
yet coming to their marks
the same time every night
of their season.

The seasons slowly move,
carrying their forms—
I recognize so few:
Orion with his belt
dominating winter,
a wobbly W,
the dipper’s angled box
and handle, each bright dot
individually
jeweled there.

Nothing there is fixed,
not even that clear star
that seems always to point
just one way as it speeds
farther and farther off.
All of them are whirling
on their separate paths,
circles and ellipses,
poles of radiance
that spread the dark.

What can be made of that?
If you are nothing now
but memory, the stars
seem a proper home.
Long after the sun
swells to disperse the earth,
they’ll change as you have,
light vanishing with time,
light beyond the reach
of light itself.

Staring at the light
an explosion sent
from some place nowhere now,
I know it will outlast
whatever I become.
Imagining its end,
I see it moving still
when nothing can be seen
and we are both nothing
everywhere.