Thread: Anthony Hecht
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Unread 11-04-2001, 08:04 PM
Tim Murphy Tim Murphy is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Fargo ND, USA
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Glad you fellows liked the Sarabande. Here's the title poem, which Professor Hecht sent me a few days after my father died last fall.

"The Darkness and the Light
Are Both Alike to Thee"

--Psalms 139:12

Like trailing silks, the light
Hangs in the olive trees
As the pale wine of day
Drains to its very lees:
Huge presences of gray
Rise up, and then it's night.

Distantly lights go on.
Scattered like fallen sparks
Bedded in peat, they seem
Set in the plushest darks
Until a timid gleam
Of matins turns them wan,

Like the elderly and frail
Who've lasted through the night,
Cold brows and silent lips,
For whom the rising light
Entails their own eclipse,
Brightening as they fail.
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