Overnight
In Memory of Paul Violi (1944–2011)
I did not realize that you were fading from sight
I don’t believe I could have helped with the transition
You most likely would have made a joke of it
Did you hear about the two donkeys stuck in an airshaft
I don’t believe I could have helped with the transition
The doorway leading to the valleys of dust is always open
Did you hear about the two donkeys stuck in an airshaft
You might call this the first of many red herrings
The doorway leading to the valleys of dust is always open
The window overlooking the sea is part of the dream
You might call this the first of many red herrings
The shield you were given as a child did not protect you
The window overlooking the sea is part of the dream
One by one the words leave you, even this one
The shield you were given as a child did not protect you
The sword is made of air before you knew it
One by one the words leave you, even this one
I did not realize that you were fading from sight
The sword is made of air before you knew it
You most likely would have made a joke of it
Copyright © 2018 John Yau. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 9, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
“‘Overnight’ is an elegy for the poet Paul Violi (1944–2011), whose work I first read in the late 1970s. I took the title of the poem from his book Overnight (Hanging Loose Press), which was first published in 2007. In the obituary that appeared in The New York Times, William Grimes wrote that Violi was ‘a poet with an easy, conversational style and satiric bent who reworked arcane historical verse forms and invented his own in poems that mimicked glossaries, errata slips, travel brochures and cover letters.’ I chose the pantoum—a form where every line appears twice in a predetermined order—as a way of honoring Violi and his poetry.”
—John Yau
John Yau
Art critic, essayist, poet, and prose writer John Yau teaches at Rutgers University.