Sundown

This is the time lean woods shall spend

A steeped-up twilight, and the pale evening drink,

And the perilous roe, the leaper to the west brink,

Trembling and bright to the caverned cloud descend.

Now shall you see pent oak gone gusty and frantic,

Stooped with dry weeping, ruinously unloosing

The sparse disheveled leaf, or reared and tossing

A dreary scarecrow bough in funeral antic.

Then, tatter you and rend,

Oak heart, to your profession mourning; not obscure

The outcome, not crepuscular; on the deep floor

Sable and gold match lustres and contend.

And rags of shrouding will not muffle the slain.

This is the immortal extinction, the priceless wound

Not to be staunched. The live gold leaks beyond,

And matter’s sanctified, dipped in a gold stain.

Copyright Credit: Léonie Adams, “Sundown” from Poems: A Selection (New York: The Noonday Press, 1959). Used by permission of Judith Farr, Literary Executrix of the Estate of Léonie Adams.

Source: Poems: A Selection (The Noonday Press, 1959)