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WALKING ON A STRANGE, UNSUPERINTENDED NIGHT
By Quentin Smith
The sky is careening
Wildly over the land,
And the clouds roar so low
Over the earth they almost
Knock the top off my head
And then, amidst the gray onslaught
There is a wide, deep clearness . . .
Straight up, the moon glares
Like a molten rock . . .
Like heaven’s last eye, stoneblind,
And hard as ice.
My thoughts run in a black streak,
I walk in unconnected circles
Beneath the fierce light;
I can see myself only as
Sheer being-here, and out there, raw
Naked things –
I cannot fathom myself
In the same way that
I cannot fathom the world
Out of the dark the wind blows;
A wind coming from where?
Going beyond me, to where?
A shadow flows over the field.
Now the moon is gone for good,
And slowly a gray spreading sky
Becomes the roof of a tunnel
That stretches over my head.
The stunned violence of the night’s IS
Has enveloped me,
All I can see is the blown outline
Of the alien trees
Looming in from the far corners
Of the ground.
I walk three steps towards
The blackened horizon
And then fall into the long grass,
And I am prostrate
As the acres of darkness
Come swirling in a sea over my limbs.
Written 1973
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