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Lola Ridge
Long vast shapes... cooled and flushed through with darkness....
Lidless windows
Glazed with a flashy luster
From some little pert cafe chirping up like a sparrow.
And down among iron guts
Piled silver
Throwing gray spatter of light... pale without heat...
Like the pallor of dead bodies.
Love, leave me like the light,
The gently passing day;
We would not know, but for the night,
When it has slipped away.
Go quietly; a dream,
When done, should leave no trace
That it has lived, except a gleam
Across the dreamer’s face.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
The pale road winds faintly upward into the dark skies,
And beside it on the rough grass that the wind invisibly stirs,
Sheltered by sharp-speared gorse and the berried junipers,
Shining steadily with a green light, the glow-worm lies.
We regard it ; and this hill and all the other hills
That fall in folds to the river, very smooth and steep,
And the hangers and brakes that the darkness thickly fills
Fade like phantoms round the light and night is deep, so deep,—
That all the world is emptiness about the still flame
And we are small shadows standing lost in the huge night.
We gather up the glow-worm, stooping with dazzled sight,
And carry it to the little enclosed garden whence we came,
Women of night life amid the lights
Where the line of your full, round throats
Matches in gleam the glint of your eyes
And the ring of your heart-deep laughter :
It is much to be warm and sure of to-morrow.
Women of night life along the shadows,
Lean at your throats and skulking the walls.
Gaunt as a bitch worn to the bone,
Under the paint of your smiling faces :
It is much to be warm and sure of to-morrow.
O for the coat of a dog
in a chill wind
or a bear
pleasant as a storm
the woods are canonical
for trouble
being full of such
extraordinary rooms
curtains of light
where I go to sleep
enchantments
whispering in the ear
flat on the ground
as if dead
fingers as high
as they could reach
in one of my eyes the greatest wonders
and in the other sleep
so with sure glasses
light might be art
I kiss her wound
to turn it into light
or some great fire
though the gun could not
be got out
art that sings
we all unlearn to limn
beginning eyes
take great light
the way I find life
is any day an art
how I look at things
in my room by candlelight
white light and simple talk
promise a Zen of salt
like a road in the country
of a hand
I see people as light
rich with use
but they are not
and I do not accept that
not knowing any
so I believe our hands
meeting
present
being us