Louise Bogan
The cold remote islands
And the blue estuaries
Where what breathes, breathes
The restless wind of the inlets,
And what drinks, drinks
The incoming tide;
Where shell and weed
Wait upon the salt wash of the sea,
And the clear nights of stars
Swing their lights westward
To set behind the land;
Where the pulse clinging to the rocks
Renews itself forever;
Where, again on unclouded nights,
The water reflects
The firmament’s partial setting;
—O remember
In your narrowing dark hours
That more things move
Than blood in the heart.
‘Night’ is excerpted from The Blue Estuaries.
Chosen for FSG Poetry Month by Sarah Scire.
Books by the celebrated poet/critic Louise Bogan (1897-1970) include Body of This Death (1923), Dark Summer (1929), The Sleeping Fury (1937), Poems and New Poems (1941), Collected Poems 1923-1953 (1954), Achievement in American Poetry, 1900-1950 (1951), and Collected Poems 1923-1953 (1954).What the Woman Lived: Selected Letters of Louise Bogan 1920-1970 (1973) was edited by Ruth Limmer.
RELATED STORIES