our one night's identity

Here's a Louis MacNeice poem (as taken from the pictured 1973 collection), appropriate for the longest night of the year:


from TRILOGY FOR X

And love hung still as crystal over the bed
And filled the corners of the enormous room;
the boom of dawn that left her sleeping, showing
The flowers mirrored in the mahogany table.

O my love, if only I were able
To protract this hour of quiet after passion,
Not ration happiness but keep this door for ever
Closed on the world, its own world closed within it.

But dawn's waves trouble with the bubbling minute,
the names of books come clear upon their shelves,
the reason delves for duty and you will wake
With a start and go on living on your own.

The first train passes and the windows groan,
Voices will hector and your voice become
A drum in tune with theirs, which all last night
Like sap that fingered through a hungry tree
Asserted our one night's identity.

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Louis MacNeice (1907 - 1963)

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