1 <br />In the evening <br />haze darkening on the hills, <br />purple of the eternal, <br />a last bird crosses over, <br />‘flop flop,' adoring <br />only the instant. <br /> <br /> 2 <br />Nine years ago, <br />in a plane that rumbled all night <br />above the Atlantic, <br />I could see, lit up <br />by lightning bolts jumping out of it, <br />a thunderhead formed like the face <br />of my brother, looking down <br />on blue, <br />lightning-flashed moments of the Atlantic. <br /> <br /> 3 <br />He used to tell me, <br />"What good is the day? <br />On some hill of despair <br />the bonfire <br />you kindle can light the great sky— <br />though it's true, of course, to make it burn <br />you have to throw yourself in ..." <br /> <br /> 4 <br />Wind tears itself hollow <br />in the eaves of these ruins, ghost-flute <br />of snowdrifts <br />that build out there in the dark: <br />upside-down ravines <br />into which night sweeps <br />our cast wings, our ink-spattered feathers. <br /> <br /> 5 <br />I listen. <br />I hear nothing. Only <br />the cow, the cow of such <br />hollowness, mooing <br />down the bones. <br /> <br /> 6 <br />Is that a <br />rooster? He <br />thrashes in the snow <br />for a grain. Finds <br />it. Rips <br />it into <br />flames. Flaps. Crows. <br />Flames <br />bursting out of his brow. <br /> <br /> 7 <br />How many nights must it take <br />one such as me to learn <br />that we aren't, after all, made <br />from that bird that flies out of its ashes, <br />that for us <br />as we go up in flames, our one work <br />is <br />to open ourselves, to be <br />the flames?<br /><br />Galway Kinnell<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/another-night-in-ruins/
