Galaxy Love
There’s too little time left to measure
the space between us for that was
long ago—that time—so just lie
under the dark blue quilt and put
the fat pillows with the blue slips
on the great windowsill so we can
look over them and down to the
small figures hurrying by
in total silence and think of the heat
up here and the cold down there
while I turn the light off with the right
hand and gather you in close with the wrong.
From Galaxy Love: Poems by Gerald Stern. Copyright © 2017 by Gerald Stern. Used with permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Gerald Stern
Gerald Stern was born in Pittsburgh on February 22, 1925. His recent books of poetry include the posthumous collection Blessed as We Were Late Selected and New Poems, 2000–2018 (W. W. Norton, 2023); Galaxy Love (W. W. Norton, 2017); Divine Nothingness (W. W. Norton, 2014); In Beauty Bright (W. W. Norton, 2012); Early Collected Poems: 1965–1992 (W. W. Norton, 2010), Save the Last Dance (W. W. Norton, 2008); Everything Is Burning (W. W. 2005); American Sonnets (W. W. Norton, 2002); Last Blue: Poems (W. W.