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Carl Sandburg
Dreams in the dusk,
Only dreams closing the day
And with the day's close going back
To the gray things, the dark things.
The far, deep things of dreamland.
Dreams, only dreams in the dusk,
Only the old remembered pictures
Of lost days when the day's loss
Wrote in tears the heart's loss.
Tears and loss and broken dreams
May find your heart at dusk.
in the wool of the river
I should be profuse
journey anywhere at home
appear duskish
Right at dusk, as always,
I overhear myself: a drone note
audible in the lull
between shifts of crickets.
Darkness rises from the ground
between the corn stalks,
which are anything but still.
I step deliberately, one season
on each foot. Today left a crust
of salt around my collar,
lifted now by a passing breath
of wings. I don’t look up.
Four quick cries & a pause,
then two more: Estiquirín.
The hoe handle digs
a furrow in my shoulder
the light is going
a few idle boys burn a table
for the heat
Right at dusk the mother bear
leads her cubs down to
the edge of the woods
& stops, hearing a screen door
ease open, smelling trouble.
My grossly unequal nose picks up
nothing of her musk or
the sweet milk oozing
from well-bit nipples.
My primate eyes are made for
the colors of day, not shades
of darkness. I peer
into every shadow between the trees,
each clot of night.
The space between us fills
with explosions of breath:
To the thrush singing at the woods’ edge
it must look as if I’m hitting myself
but that’s only incidental.
I’m swatting mosquitoes.
To the cops at the stadium
it might appear that she’s praying
when she closes her eyes
to see the afterimages on her eyelids.
To friends & admirers of the legendary coach
it must’ve seemed so generous,
all the things he gave those boys,
all the places he took them.
To us it’s a mournful song
but to the wood thrush itself?
Perhaps just the sound of dusk
passing through its windpipe.
A queen's brief flaming left
those ruined palace walls
these peacocks strutting them at dusk
One calls
hideous with what its thousand eyes that cry
in coming night behold.
the name refers for use
dog chair wall you
demand response
each hears his way
but knows the category general
here's a chair so sit
in talk we seek
to know grasp words
as means
but in the poem
they are also ends like dance
the chosen china
or when in the dusk we put
our chores away and share
some talk a book
the hush
dusk &
each with its pile of new hay
winter horses
Between granite and sky occurs
the culture of a barn—
a parliament of odors,
treaties of seed.
Every one of those barn-swallows
transports a secret word
under its wing until at dusk
a statement gathers—
a large calling
with accents of loam. Day
utters this immense phrase
to night. The message
concerns entirety.
The mariachi
trumpets fade with the red gored sun
mellowing at dusk.
Children dart behind,
scuffling in the dust, brown wrinkled skin like
scabbards of lost dreams.
You sit in the dark
a silhouette singing Spanish songs
of lost love and pain.
I hear church bells
in your voice, the lonely pang of night
keeps you drifting
between dreams and sorrow,
of lost opportunities, things unsaid,
actions incomplete.
You lay beside me
With secrets in their eyes the blue-winged Hours
Rustle through the meadow
Dropping shadow.
Yawning among red flowers,
The Moon Child with her golden hoop
And a pink star drifting after,
Leans to me where I droop.
I hear her delicate, soft laughter,
And through my hair her tiny fingers creep. . . .
I shall sleep.