Introduction

Watch me read
the poem as
a YouTube video.

Video Music: Serenade for Strings: Larghetto.
By Antonin Dvorak. Performed by the Advent Chamber Orchestra.
Music free to use at YouTube.

Perhaps you want a moment for reflection
Or a glimpse of someone's struggles with perfection.
Even greyhounds need a clear, still light
To bring them to the precipice of night.
Rest here, then, where joys and sorrows blend;
Yearning needs no goal and has no end.

Be like a bell, and let me be your tongue:
Your thoughts will toll when I've your passions rung.

Nor can I know what words will strike your ears:
In poems one's life transfigures what one hears.
Clear words contain a silence still as glass,
Horizons as remote as distant brass,
Old meanings darting luminous in pools
Like light caught in the blaze of well-cut jewels.
All this exists like sound without a bell;
So be its instrument, and listen well.

Give my poems the courtesy of space;
Often they need room to show their grace.
Reason works quite wonderfully by day;
Darkness must be grasped another way.
On you the moon, with muted, mirrored beams,
Now casts its lace of memories and dreams.