Delvaux Nocturne

Night falls, trams halt,
the points’ clatter sleeps;
the last lamp casts its amber arc
on tar, asphalt
and girls bowling hoops.

Subfusc street scenes,
dark stations sans trains,
fill with sonambulistic dreams:
cool nudes’ white lines
and bare skeletons.

Above flagged squares,
still marshalling yards
and stark arcades of plaster casts
spread wires, fine-drawn
against lilac clouds.

And here’s one of the pictures that partly inspired the poem (my daughter Diana provided the rest!)

The Forest Library

Unread, the forest library,
rooted in dark earth of words,
grows yearly, incrementally,
round heartwood’s deep primordial hoards
where each tree’s leaves are folios
of vast collections
with yellowed cuttings fallen across
round stumps of lecterns

and all through its voluminous tracts,
marked only by the indices
weevils scrawl on bark-bound book backs
in shady aisles and galleries,
the breeze passing beneath its eaves,
its quiet cloisters,
releases from its mighty beams
the sound of voices.

A Nightsong of Eichendorff

I wandered late by rock and tree,

the moon crept out so secretly

behind its cloak of cloud;

and here and there in the dark vale

the fleeting moonbeams bleached ghost-pale

a nightingale sang loud.

Far off, the torrent’s silver song

ran over stone unseen, nightlong,

transmuting the moonlight.

My thoughts, mercurial, argentine,

seemed more the woods and hills’ than mine

in the phantasmal night.

Syrinx

Pure gleaners linger, haunted by

the amber flutes of afternoon

and golden locks of sun-gods, strewn

regardless over fields of rye.

Deep in the thickets’ covert shade

a woodwind ambush is preparing

outside the range of human hearing;

bassoons lean over every glade.

Aeonian and beyond death,

the goat-foot piper idly slides

his caprine lip across the reeds

thrilling at the divine breath.

The Wind and the Candle

The wind has prowled around this house all night,
trying the doors and windows one by one,
seeking a point of entry left unbarred,
testing each latch with fumbling gloves of cold;
an ill guest, blustering and petulant,
unwelcome yet insistent, pressing claims
importunately, dunning all night long.
The branches shuffle like accomplices,
huddled in cloaks of shadow, covertly,
to cover its advances, whispering
conspiracies by lampposts’ orange shade.
Inside, we light one night light under glass;
Diana says ‘hello candle’, waving hi,
greeting the spirit in the little flame,
born when the wick is lit in its low glow
to be the iris of the watchful night
behind the starry glass in the still air.

Diana the Night Explorer

How funny that our little girl

does such gymnastics in her sleep:

turned topsy-turvy in the bed

or halfway out, her head alone

still pillowed on the mattress edge,

as though, being a child, she has

to roam much further in her dreams.