Nocturne

1.

You, peering deep into the night,
having wakened weak with grief
to hours of unrelenting insight--

you, abandoned by belief,
in that too familiar room, alone,
yearning for sleep's unreal relief--

know that your solitary groan
is heard: know that your darkened care
cuts close to the common bone--

within the mind of the spindly chair
or deep inside the bed’s uncertain frame,
even in the window's bare black stare

your pain is greeted, as if by name--
imagine that the tender pardon
you have sought requires no shame--

conceive of silence as a garden
where the thinking heart may green
a meaning. Trust that your heart will not harden--

because if fading gods don’t intervene,
nothing means but what you mean.

2.

So, the night has summoned you once more,
and like a man condemned you mark the hours 
‘til dawn cracks open the day’s grim door.

What’s left of hope the time devours,
and yet you fear the night may never end:
darkness sprouts such anxious flowers.

But nothing is ever as you intend --
wind blows, a sparrow shifts its perch,
the moon continues to ascend:

still, in what way does the autumn birch
intend to lose its last gold leaf?
There is no purpose in the search --

there is only the brave motif
of being: be the meaning of the night;
be the object of your own belief.

Truly you have been given the night 
to know: know it as your deeper part:
close the book; switch off the light --

listen: it’s the beating of your heart,
the steady beating of your heart.

3.

Yes, the night is vast but you are not --
its tide of darkness floods your mind,
engulfing action, drowning thought

as there you drift, inert, too blind
to wonder – and yet, what is that smell?
that apprehension un- or ill-defined

which even sleep will not dispel?
that cold faint foulness always there,
seeping as from a deep but tainted well?

Is it failure’s scented snare?
the chill of decomposing dreams?
or is it the perfume of fresh despair? 

If you seek its source, it seems
so near -- too near.  But can you be
and fail to be what life redeems?

Though drifting on the night’s dark sea,
though north and south have fallen off your chart,
the compass points at you unfailingly.

You are the destination: start
to swim: a guiding current will give you heart.

Kingdom

That cheap hotel room 
just within the massive walls of old St. Malo: 
that small, airless, paid-for-in-cash room

whose narrow window overlooked the cafe terrace,
which that afternoon was slow and murmuring:
that dim hot haven of a room

with yellow walls -- or were they yellowed? – 
and through whose slightly parted curtains
slanting sunlight glorified a shaft of languid dust: 

that moment when I wakened there, my love beside me
napping still, as were our little children head-to-toe
upon the sagging slender bed a step from ours:

that last-room-in-the-inn where, as I lay,
their drowsy give and take of breath dwelled peaceably 
amid the distant café clink of cutlery and glassware:

that was my momentary kingdom.

Immortality*

(While Awaiting the Subway)

What did she see −
that young and purely solitary woman
standing in the cool gray silence of the subway stop

as though composed by a photographer,
book in hand, intently reading,
her choral lips and quilted sky-blue coat

the only colors in that timeless light –
what did she see, as looking up
amid the turning of a page, her eyes met mine?

Perhaps I was a man
no longer of an age to hope
for her reciprocal regard,

though the truth is it was not at her
that I’d been looking,
or should I say not only at her,

but at the book
in which she was so deeply steeped
I had to know its title.

My eyes were good
though not so good as they used to be –
what is?

so as if to scan the twi-lit track
for the train I hoped would be delayed,
I took a step obliquely towards her,

until just glimpsing the elusive cover
of her book, just as her languid hand
turned over that transforming page,  

just as her breasts rose up then subtly set
on the impassioned breath she drew
which seemed in turn to lift her chin,

the dying cadence in a melody of motion
I could not help but follow --
until her eyes met mine.

What did I see
if not a shining instant of her wonder?
if not the lingering light reflected from

whatever fire burned within the words just read?
which in the moment of my marveling
was suddenly eclipsed

by her perception of whatever darkness skulked
in my beholding mind,
was smothered by a gathering gloom

of fear, contempt, and violation –
for something had been violated –
and in the mute unmeaning moment

of that cool gray gulf of time and space
she turned her back to me,
retreated up the platform,

then deftly re-composed herself,
her sky-blue back still turned,
the open book once more in hand.

The very silence tittered at my shame
even as a plaintive voice within me cried
No please!  You don’t understand!

I’m not like other men – I too read books –
For me as well as you
a fateful train will all too soon arrive…

I might have crossed to where she stood
and might have said these things,
but history cast its iron shadow

even on my dumb paralysis,
since in New York it’s dangerous
for strangers at a subway stop

to seek an understanding.
And yet, how can I not remember
that her eyes were blue

and that the title of her book was Immortality?

*Immortality, a novel by Milan Kundera