Night Without Sleep - Robinson Jeffers

[Larry Robinson]

Night Without Sleep

The world's as the world is; the nations rearm and prepare to change; the age of tyrants returns;
The greatest civilization that ever existed builds itself higher towers on breaking foundations.
Recurrent  episodes; they were determined when the ape's children first ran in packs, chipped flint to an edge.

I lie and hear dark rain beat the roof, and the blind wind.

                                            In the morning
 perhaps I shall find strength again
to value the immense beauty of this time of the world, the flowers of decay
their pitiful loveliness, the fever dream
tapestries that back the drama and are called the future.


This ebb of vitality feels the ignoble and cruel
Incidents, not the vast abstract order.

                                                       I lie and hear dark rain beat the
   roof, and the night-blind wind.

In the Ventana country darkness and rain and the roar of waters fill the
    deep mountain throats.
The creekside shelf of sand where we lay last August under a slip of stars
And firelight played on the leaning gorge-walls, is drowned and lost.  The
    deer of the country huddle on a ridge
In a close herd under madrone-trees; they tremble when a rock-slide goes
   down, they open great darkness-
Drinking eyes and press closer.

                                                  Cataracts of rock
Rain down the mountain from cliff to cliff and torment the stream-bed.
    The stream deals with them.  The laurels are wounded.
Redwoods go down with their earth and lie thwart the gorge.  I hear the
    torrent boulders battering each other,
I feel the flesh of the mountain move on its bones in the wet darkness.
   Is this more beautiful
Than man's disasters?  These wounds will heal in their time;  so will
   humanity's.  This is more beautiful...at night...

      - Robinson Jeffers








"Be joyful though you have considered all the facts."
    - Wendell Berry
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