Crescendo
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA
AUGUST, 2005
But I'm trying hard to know what
is meant when we claim O silent night—
a night like this, when blown out is all
the blaze of the sky but not heat, not
dampness either, not even that star, alone,
like a crack in the firmament (in the levees)
and what floods in, because only it can,
is a light to make light of until we can't—
then a breeze passes, with its humanlike
moan, since it's human I can know it, I hear it,
as I do the magnolia-shudder, the bird
-scatter, as I do the river: can't you hear it
singing far off—?
Then not as far—?
