A Summer Night
The night is a shrill rhythm of insects,
The lighted windows that showed through the leaves
One hy one go out. “Goodnight,”
A voice murmurs in the shadow of vines,
“Goodnight,” and for ever is in the voice.
An old violinist crosses the Fenway
And watches the lights go out. He can almost
Hear the sigh of the weary bodies.
A freight train puffs ponderously, far
Away to the eastward, and down the highway
A belated motor crowded with singing
Revelers careless of slumber passes
With raucous shout that ribbons to silence.
If only God would step from the stars
And lead his own composition, if only
An old violinist might put his bow
And his violin away for ever.
He hears from under his arm where he clutches
The case, the twang of a plucked string;
The damp of the Fens is chill on the sinews
Of old men and old violins.
But the crickets and treetoads make sweet din
In the meadows, the fireflies spiral downward
Like dropping fragments of moonlight. Strange,
These small accompaniments of desire
Outlive desire itself and its memory.
The city would wholly sleep but for me,
He says, but for me and the arc-lights buzzing
And twitching uneasily in their globes
Like thoughts in a mind when the sun has gone.
He draws from his pocket a thick gold watch
And holds it up. It is half-past two.
Foolish for one to consult the time
On a golden dial this summer night Who might more wisely be counting the leaves
Of seventy scattered calendars.
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A freight train puffs ponderously, far
Away to the eastward, and down the highway
A belated motor crowded with singing
Revelers careless of slumber passes
With raucous shout that ribbons to silence.
If only God would step from the stars
And lead his own composition, if only
An old violinist might put his bow
And his violin away for ever.
He hears from under his arm where he clutches
The case, the twang of a plucked string;
The damp of the Fens is chill on the sinews
Of old men and old violins.
But the crickets and treetoads make sweet din
In the meadows, the fireflies spiral downward
Like dropping fragments of moonlight. Strange,
These small accompaniments of desire
Outlive desire itself and its memory.
The city would wholly sleep but for me,
He says, but for me and the arc-lights buzzing
And twitching uneasily in their globes
Like thoughts in a mind when the sun has gone.
He draws from his pocket a thick gold watch
And holds it up. It is half-past two.
Foolish for one to consult the time
On a golden dial this summer night Who might more wisely be counting the leaves
Of seventy scattered calendars.
~~
Robert Hillyer (1895-1961)
from The Gates of the Compass, 1930
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]
.jpg)
Eden, Janine and Jim, Night on Third Avenue, 2020. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.
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