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The
night's drifts
Pile up below me and behind my
back,
Slide down the hill, rise again, and
build
Eerie little dunes on the roof of the
house.
In the valley below me,
Miles between me
and the town of St.-Jeannet,
The road lamps
glow.
They are so cold, they might as well be
dark.
Trucks and cars
Cough and drone down there
between the golden
Coffins of greenhouses, the
startled squawk
Of a rooster claws heavily
across
A grove, and drowns.
The gumming snarl of
some grouchy dog sounds,
And a man bitterly shifts
his broken gears.
True night still hangs on,
Mist
cluttered with a racket of its own.
Now on the
mountainside,
A little way downhill among turning
rucks,
A square takes form in the side of a dim
wall.
I hear a bucket rattle or something,
tinny,
No other stirring behind the dim face
Of
the goatherd's house. I imagine
His goats are still
sleeping, dreaming
Of the fresh roses
Beyond the
walls of the greenhouse below them.
And of lettuce
leaves opening in Tunisia.
I turn, and
somehow
Impossibly hovering in the air over
everything,
The Mediterranean, nearer to the
moon
Than this mountain is, Shines. A voice
clearly
Tells me to snap out of it. Galway
Mutters
out of the house and up the stone stairs
To start the
motor. The moon and the stars
Suddenly flicker out,
and the whole mountain
Appears, pale as a
shell.
Look, the sea has not fallen and
broken
Our heads. How can I feel so warm
Here in
the dead center of January? I can
Scarcely believe
it, and yet I have to, this is
The only life I have.
I get up from the stone.
My body mumbles something
unseemly
And follows me. Now we are all sitting here
strangely
On top of sunlight.
James
Wright
Read poems about / on: january,
house,
moon,
dog,
believe,
winter,
sea,
dark,
night,
car,
dream,
rose,
sleep,
star
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James Wright
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James Wright
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