The Night

Another Monday. This is becoming a bad habit, and I'll try to break it soon. Well, thanks to summer vacation, I've taken to staying up late and watching the sky and the stars. It's a very nice change of pace from the early evenings of the school year, and has given me a chance to appreciate the night in a way I never really had before. There is a wonder, you know, in morning and night; it's just difficult to find that wonder without going to sleep very late or waking up very early. In the morning, before anyone else is awake, everything is quiet, like an empty cathedral, and the possibilities of the day seem limitless, while in the night - the late, late night, when everyone has been fast asleep for hours - a sort of second life awakens, as the stars light up the world and the drowsiness of sleep missed is forgotten and falls away. Both are full of wonder, but at the present, I prefer the night, as does this sonnet.


The Night

The night is not an old man, yet, nor I,
when stars have barely broken from the blue,
to overtake the slowly dusking sky
and bid the final limbs of light adieu.

We two, we sit, below and there, about,
and watch the other watching each in turn,
but little hope have I, a poor devout,
of demonstrating any great concern

for you, so vast in silence and in strength,
and throwing over millions in your might,
as captivated subjects lay the length
of bodies down in somnolent delight,

but I will ever wait and watch your brow,
and take my dues from sleep I disavow.