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William Dickey, night, in English Clear filters

ContemplativeWilliam Dickey

For an Astronomer

After the round red corporate sun has sunk With a glittering smile and smoking a big cigar, And the chimneys stinking like upright bits of punk Have lost their brick assurance of what they are, In the back yard, McConkey, to your work. The long light shakes, but the longer light is steady, That has come down the channels of the dark To find you and your diamond eyepiece ready. After the searchlights glancing through the black Die to red worms, their business being finished, And on the nondescript short order shack The neon "Eat!" flickers and is diminished, In the back yard invite the light that follows Dark stars upon their courses and comes still Singled from the profusion of its fellows
RomanticWilliam Dickey

Autumnal

Shall we, while the night encloses And extinguishes the roses, Argue that the color there Is unconquerably fair, Fixed past mutability In the ever-seeing eye? Shall we, when assertive bone Predicates the skeleton, Arguing beneath the skin That its covering grows thin, Claim our younger counterpart From the album of the heart? Shall we, when the petal lingers For a moment on our fingers, But the tree expects the shape Of a narrower landscape,
CheerfulWilliam Dickey

A Little Night Music

My wife and I purr, evenings, When the red fire is lit. The cat is the only spectator To the enmity we knit. We, the indigenous felines, Whiskered and pompous and grey, Lap up the placid content Of our malicious day. "I ate the meat for your dinner And the sweet cat had the bones." "I took your furs to the pawnshop And exchanged them for trifling loans." "The sweet cat has worms in his belly. I've left it for you to cope." "Your three bridge partners are dying, And the doctors have given up hope."
RomanticWilliam Dickey

Static Electricity

The celebrations of her night began. She was as indolent as the fallen silk Nightdress that spumed upon the still divan. She was the promise of the lesser flame Before the candle blossoms and grows quick, She was the relaxation of the foam At quiet water, when the tide hangs pent, Poised for its full swell to the anxious shore. She was enchaining her own element Until the music of the night might swim Upon her wholly like a pool of milk, Cool, animal. Until she in her dim Half-motion through the sibilant half-dark Might cling, as to the hand a strip of silk Full-charged, might cling, waiting its sudden spark.

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