“The woman is not just a pleasure, nor even a problem. She is a meniscus that allows the absolute to have a shape, that lets him skate however briefly on the mystery, her presence luminous on the ordinary and the grand. Like the odor at night in Pittsburgh’s empty streets after summer rain on maples and sycamore.” ProblemNightPleasureMysteryStreetsShapesSummerOrdinaryRainEmptyAbsolutesLuminousSkatesOdorPittsburghMapleSummer RainEmpty Streets Book:The Dance Most of All: Poems Source: The Dance Most of All: Poems
“But anything worth doing is worth doing badly. Like being there by that summer ocean on the other side of the island while love was fading out of her, the stars burning so extravagantly those nights that anyone could tell you they would never last.” LastsNightStarsSidesOceanSummerBurningIslandsBeing ThereFadingAnything Worth Doing Author:Jack Gilbert
“WAKING AT NIGHT The blue river is grey at morning and evening. There is twilight at dawn and dusk. I lie in the dark wondering if this quiet in me now is a beginning or an end.” IfsEndsLyingNightDarkWonderMorningQuietRiversBlueEveningDawnWakingTwilightGreyDuskDawn And Dusk Book:Collected Poems Source: Collected Poems
“THE ABANDONED VALLEY Can you understand being alone so long you would go out in the middle of the night and put a bucket into the well so you could feel something down there tug at the other end of the rope?” FeelsWellsLongEndsNightMiddleValleysAbandonedRopeBucketsMiddle Of The NightLonliness Book:Collected Poems Source: Collected Poems
