Night does not show things, it suggests them. It disturbes and surprises us with its strangeness. It liberates forces within us which are dominated by our reason during the daytime.” ~ Brassai

                   

                   

“This Night” by Black Lab

                   

In the Secular Night

In the secular night you wander around

alone in your house. It’s two-thirty.

Everyone has deserted you,

or this is your story;

you remember it from being sixteen,

when the others were out somewhere, having a good time,

or so you suspected,

and you had to baby-sit.

You took a large scoop of vanilla ice-cream

and filled up the glass with grapejuice

and ginger ale, and put on Glenn Miller

with his big-band sound,

and lit a cigarette and blew the smoke up the chimney,

and cried for a while because you were not dancing,

and then danced, by yourself, your mouth circled with purple.

Now, forty years later, things have changed,

and it’s baby lima beans.

It’s necessary to reserve a secret vice.

This is what comes from forgetting to eat

at the stated mealtimes. You simmer them carefully,

drain, add cream and pepper,

and amble up and down the stairs,

scooping them up with your fingers right out of the bowl,

talking to yourself out loud.

You’d be surprised if you got an answer,

but that part will come later.

There is so much silence between the words,

you say. You say, The sensed absence

of God and the sensed presence

amount to much the same thing,

only in reverse.

You say, I have too much white clothing.

You start to hum.

Several hundred years ago

this could have been mysticism

or heresy. It isn’t now.

Outside there are sirens.

Someone’s been run over.

The century grinds on.

~ Margaret Atwood

                   

couldn’t decide between the two, so posting both . . .

                   

The Starry Night

“That does not keep me from having a terrible need of—shall I say the word—religion.
Then I go out at night to paint the stars.” ~ Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother

The town does not exist

except where one black-haired tree slips

up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.

The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars.

Oh starry starry night! This is how

I want to die.

It moves. They are all alive.

Even the moon bulges in its orange irons

to push children, like a god, from its eye.

The old unseen serpent swallows up the stars.

Oh starry starry night! This is how

I want to die:

into that rushing beast of the night,

sucked up by that great dragon, to split

from my life with no flag,

no belly,

no cry.

~ Anne Sexton

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