Night Watch
We shall learn to suffer the long dark,
Learn to melt with the short darkness.
As clouds cover the stars,
As the fire settles back
And the cats, relaxed, alert
Become still
( now it is their world).
The hum of voices, insistent, distracting, withdraws,
An undertow sucked into silence
(The spaces between things).
Roaming large and small:
The solid fears and frights,
Noises with eyes,
Snarl of unknowingness.
(Keep still.)
It is the edges that melt away
The words no longer mine.
The certainties belong to naive daylight
Not to this red tongue of dark beauty
Lapping synapses with galactic spin.
Enough to be breathing in and out
Enough to be watchful as sleepers sleep
Enough to shift weight slightly as the heavens wheel
Enough to know little, if nothing at all,
To rest upon the pulse and flow of veins
The warmth of cell and muscle
The opium castles of consciousness
(emperor’s clothes on a ghost of habit).
Keep dark the hours of darkness
Keep silence in the silent wanderings
The silent wings, the silent edges,
As silence is the only way,
The one sure way,
To find what becomes the centre.
simonhlilly 