A Poem by Howard Moss, Born Today in 1922

The light that hangs in the ailanthus weaves

The leaves’ leavetaking overtaking leaves.

The actual is real and not imagined,—still,

The eye, so learned in disenchantment, sees

Two trees at once, this one of summer’s will,

And winter’s one, when no bird will assail

The skyline’s hyaline transparencies,

Emptying its architecture by degrees.

Roundly in its fury, soon, the sun

Feverish with light, goes down, and on

Come ambitious stars—the stars that were

But this morning dimmed.

Somewhere a slow

Piano scales the summits of the air

And disappears, and dark descends, and though

The birds turn off their songs now light is gone,

The mind drowned in the dark may dream them on.



Paris Review