December, and the closing of the year; The momentary carolers complete Their Christmas Eves, and quickly disappear Into their houses on each lighted street.
Each car is put away in each garage; Each husband home from work, to celebrate, Has closed his house around him like a cage, And wedged the tree until the tree stood straight.
Getting the child to bed is awful work, Committing that rage to sleep that will not sleep. The lie rots in my throat saying, “O.K. There is balm in Gilead. Go to bed. Honey of generation has betrayed us both.” And truly it is no wild surmise of darkness Nor Pisgah purview of Canaan drowned in blood But only my child saying its say in bed.
Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us . . . Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent . . . Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient . . . Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous, But nothing happens.
Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire, Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles. Northward, incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles, Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war. What are we doing here?
The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow . . . We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy. Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army
As the dead prey upon us, they are the dead in ourselves, awake, my sleeping ones, I cry out to you, disentangle the nets of being!
I pushed my car, it had been sitting so long unused. I thought the tires looked as though they only needed air. But suddenly the huge underbody was above me, and the rear tires were masses of rubber and thread variously clinging together
The lean hands of wagon men put out pointing fingers here, picked this crossway, put it on a map, set up their sawbucks, fixed their shotguns, found a hitching place for the pony express, made a hitching place for the iron horse, the one-eyed horse with the fire-spit head,
Curtains drawn back, the door ajar. All winter long, it seemed, a darkening Began. But now the moonlight and the odors of the street Conspire and combine toward one community.
These are the rooms of Robinson. Bleached, wan, and colorless this light, as though All the blurred daybreaks of the spring Found an asylum here, perhaps for Robinson alone,
I have not used my darkness well, nor the Baroque arm that hangs from my shoulder, nor the Baroque arm of my chair. The rain moves out in a dark schedule. Let the wind marry. I know the creation continues through love. The rain’s a wife. I cannot sleep or lie awake. Looking at the dead I turn back, fling
For I can snore like a bullhorn or play loud music or sit up talking with any reasonably sober Irishman and Fergus will only sink deeper into his dreamless sleep, which goes by all in one flash, but let there be that heavy breathing or a stifled come-cry anywhere in the house and he will wrench himself awake
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