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More poems by Galway KinnellGalway Kinnell | Print this page.Print | Order a PoetryNotes Analysis of this poem.Analysis | View and Write CommentsComments

Poem Of Night

Galway Kinnell

1

I move my hand over 
slopes, falls, lumps of sight,
Lashes barely able to be touched,
Lips that give way so easily
it's a shock to feel underneath them

The bones smile.

Muffled a little, barely cloaked,
Zygoma, maxillary, turbinate.

2

I put my hand
On the side of your face,
You lean your head a little
Into my hand--and so,
I know you're a dormouse
Taken up in winter sleep,
A lonely, stunned weight.

3

A cheekbone,
A curved piece of brow,
A pale eyelid
Float in the dark,
And now I make out
An eye, dark,
Wormed with far-off, unaccountable lights.

4

Hardly touching, I hold
What I can only think of
As some deepest of memories in my arms,
Not mine, but as if the life in me
Were slowly remembering what it is.

You lie here now in your physicalness,
This beautiful degree of reality.

5

And now the day, raft that breaks up, comes on.

I think of a few bones
Floating on a river at night, 
The starlight blowing in a place on the water,
The river leaning like a wave towards the emptiness.

Added: 2 Mar 2002 | Last Read: 5 Jul 2009 2:50 AM | Viewed: 5140 times

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URL: http://plagiarist.com/poetry/3104/ | Viewed on 5 July 2009.
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