All of us must have been asleep when it happened
after the long day of summer and that steady clarity
without shadows that stayed on around us
and appeared not to change or to fade when the sun
had gone and the red had drained from the sky and the single
moment of chill had passed scarcely noticed across
the mown fields and the mauve valley where the colors were stopped
and after the hush through which the ends of voices
made their way from their distances when the swallows
had settled for the night and the notes of the cuckoo
echoed along the slope and the milking was finished
and the calves and dogs were closed in the breath of the barns
and we had sat talking almost in whispers long past
most bedtimes in the village and yet lights were not lit
we talked remembering how far each of us had come
to be there as the trembling bats emerged from
the crevices in the wall above us and sailed out
calling and we meant to stay up and see the night
at the moment when it turned with the calves all asleep
by then and the dogs curled beside them and Edouard
and Esther both older than the century sleeping
in another age and the children still sleeping
in the same bed and the hens down tight on their perches
the stones sleeping in the garden walls and the leaves
sleeping in the sky where there was still light with the owls
slipping by like shadows and the moles listening
the foxes listening the ears the feet some time there
we must have forgotten what we had meant to stay
awake for and it all turned away when we were not
looking I thought I had flown over the edge
of the world I could call to and that I was still flying
and had to wake to learn whether the wings were real
The Shortest Night
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