At this time of year when nights grow longer, and we can’t get rid of them soon enough in the mornings, now it is, for some reason, that I want to share this poem I’ve been mulling over, about night being gone altogether. Oh, wouldn’t it be lovely to live where bell songs would visit your garden at the break of day?

FOUR POEMS IN ONE

At six o’clock this morning
I saw the rising sun
Resting on the ground like a boulder
In the thicket back of the school,
A single great ember
About the height of a man.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Night has gone like a sickness,
The sky is pure and whole.
Our Lady of Poland spire
Is rosy with first light,
Starlings above it shatter their dark flock.
Notes of the Angelus
Leave their great iron cup
And slowly, three by three
Visit the Polish gardens round about,
Dahlias shaggy with frost
Sheds with their leaning tools
Rosebushes wrapped in burlap
Skiffs upside down on trestles
Like dishes after supper.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

These are the poems I’d show you
But you’re no longer alive.
The cables creaked and shook
Lowering the heavy box.
The rented artificial grass
Still left exposed
That gritty gash of earth
Yellow and mixed with stones
Taking your body
That never in this world
Will we see again, or touch.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

We know little
We can tell less
But one thing I know
One thing I can tell
I will see you again in Jerusalem
Which is of such beauty
No matter what country you come from
You will be more at home there
Than ever with father or mother
Than even with lover or friend
And once we’re within her borders
Death will hunt us in vain.

-Anne Porter