Poetry
NACHTMUSIK
Noir, noir,
The night has come,
The human scale
Is tipped, the rut,
The groove, the frame
Of mind forming
Out of themselves
Themselves.
Out of the heart’s
Dark corners
A single tolling note—
Clouds drift overhead
Slow, white—
In these moving shapes
A hidden ultimatum
Moves. One looks to
And listens for, say,
A future, in which
One imagines what is
Spoken has meaning, is
Carried over, as over
A causeway to a city
About to be sacked.
Around him now
The temple starts to burn.
He is singing.
What is he singing?
He is singing.
Why is he singing?
He is singing.
From lowered eyes
A touch of malice
Twinkles. In lips’
Trifling tremors,
In cheeks’ checked
Bloom—a word,
A tone, a measure.
It might be true
The thing I hunger for
Is here in all its fullness,
Slightly obscured
And just out of reach.
Only give me
The name that
Calls it forth
To frighten and amaze
By the spectacle
Of its own privation.
The invisible sun
Within flickers still.
It burns. Let it burn.
For no one.
Contributor
Michael KelleherMichael Kelleher's most recent book of poems is Visible Instruments (Chax, 2017). He is the director of the Windham-Campbell Literature Prizes at Yale.
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