A Painter’s Choreo

From The Long Sad Party

Someone was saying

something about shadows covering the field, about

how things pass, how one sleeps towards morning

and the morning goes.

Someone was saying

how the wind dies down but comes back,

how shells are the coffins of wind

but the weather continues.

It was a long night

and someone said something about the moon shedding its white

on the cold field, that there was nothing ahead

but more of the same.

Someone mentioned

a city she had been in before the war, a room with two candles

against a wall, someone dancing, someone watching.

We begin to believe

the night would not end.

Someone was saying the music was over and no one had noticed.

Then someone said something about the planets, about the stars,

how small they were, how far away.

— Mark Strand