The evenings of my boyhood now come back
to me, whose theme is stillness, as if the world
were simplified, routines of day gone slack,
the singing somewhere, peace immeasurable
whose birthplace is trees, drawing eyes like birds
that dip into those depths that gently heave,
playing out time, if you care to watch, in chords
that poet’s eye, composer’s pen here leave
to file a substitute, and lose connection:
I stay, and evening’s own great melody
till night attend, and gain the circumspection
the world, cocooned in lights, can never see;
to enter which, in some bright blaze of sound
and fury, you’d think was flat, out of round.
