Night Speech

(for a Shakespeare Festival)

The bright day is done

and we are for the dark;

but not for death.

We are, as eyelids fall

and night’s silk rises,

stalled in our sleep

to watch the written dark,

brighter than day,

rephrase our stuttered past.

This fur-lined hour

makes princes of each wretch

whose day-bed wasted,

points each lax tongue

to daggered brightness,

says what we could not say.

Awake, we stumbled; now

dream-darting truth

homes to each flying wish;

and love replays its hand,

aims its dark pinions nobly,

even its treacheries…

Night, that renews, re-orders

day’s scattered dust,

shake now from sleep’s long lips

all we have lost and done,

stars, pearls and leaded tears

on our closed eyes;

and we are for the dark