two poems about twilight
Here are two more poems from my upcoming verse novel.
drew died on a tuesday
as evening fell
i didn’t know what to feel
i wanted to cry
but struggled to find tears
i was numbed by expectation
dread and emptied hope
clouded by the ambivalence
of not knowing
whether to feel relief
for his release
from pain and despair
or to grieve for my own
my brother died at twilight
just before darkness set in
twilight is a time
of intermingling light
and dark where beauty
resides however unwelcome
and though the victor
is predestined by the diurnal
it is an internecine drama
beyond the reach
of shakespeare’s pen
or fellini’s lens
it is a time
that opens perception
inviting us to see
not in spite of the darkness
but because of it
a mockingbird behind me
impersonates the nightingale
and then the blackbird
which causes my mind to stumble
among tropes of emptiness and fear
and find itself alone
i look for god
in the pages of a book
and find comfort
in the longing of duino
and dover beach
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Pavel Somov, Ph.D. says:
i resonnated
with twilight phenomenology - although i've always termed that "diurnal" boundary for myself as a time of "dusk"
the "tropes of emptiness" - resonnated with me too - in terms of the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness/sunyata
and the search for transcendance in whatever it is that we are all writing - as we can write our way out of our own existence...
Robert Gray says:
Thank you
for your insightful comments. I chose "twilight" instead of "dusk" for this poem because of the ambiguity of whether it is at dusk or dawn, but the contextualization of the other poem (which will precede it in the novel but was actually written much later) certainly implies dusk.
Laura Hawke says:
Twilight
I may be way off base, but to me, twilight within the context of your two poems, suggests a transitioning between two different states of existence.
Your subject of death could be viewed as just that, a twilight state: The “dusk” of this existence, yet the “dawn” of another existence in the afterlife.
I love your poems. Very thought provoking.
Robert Gray says:
Excellent points
Laura,
Thank you for your observations and your kind comments. I was primarily thinking of twilight as the intersection of contrary states of my poetic soul, especially in the second poem, where I was teetering on the cusp of light and dark, but I think your reading adds an unintended richness to both poems.