Adrienne Rich — Darklight

I Early day. Grey the air. Grey the boards of the house, the bench, red the dilated potflower’s petals blue the sky that will rend through this fog. Dark summer’s outer reaches: thrown husk of a moon sharpening in the last dark blue. I think of your eye. (dark the light that washes into a deeper dark). An eye, coming in closer. Under the lens lashes and veins grow huge and huge the tear that washes out the eye, the tear that clears the eye. II When heat leaves the walls at last and the breeze comes or seems to come, off water or off the half-finished moon her silver roughened by a darkblue rag this is the ancient hour between light and dark, work and rest earthly tracks and star-trails the last willed act of the day and the night’s first dream If you could have this hour for the last hour of your life.