The Sun Used to Shine BY EDWARD THOMAS

  The Sun Used to Shine

BY EDWARD THOMAS

The sun used to shine while we two walked

Slowly together, paused and started

Again, and sometimes mused, sometimes talked

As either pleased, and cheerfully parted

 

Each night. We never disagreed

Which gate to rest on. The to be

And the late past we gave small heed.

We turned from men or poetry

 

To rumours of the war remote

Only till both stood disinclined

For aught but the yellow flavorous coat

Of an apple wasps had undermined;

 

Or a sentry of dark betonies,

The stateliest of small flowers on earth,

At the forest verge; or crocuses

Pale purple as if they had their birth

 

In sunless Hades fields. The war

Came back to mind with the moonrise

Which soldiers in the east afar

Beheld then. Nevertheless, our eyes

 

Could as well imagine the Crusades

Or Caesar's battles. Everything

To faintness like those rumours fade—

Like the brook's water glittering

 

Under the moonlight—like those walks

Now—like us two that took them, and

The fallen apples, all the talks

And silence—like memory's sand

 

When the tide covers it late or soon,

And other men through other flowers

In those fields under the same moon

Go talking and have easy hours.

the point of the needle by Dana Levin

  

The Point of the Needle

• 
• 
• 
• 

Dana Levin

Since you got to behead
each
              hollyhock crown

              with your round
              guillotine

              of a mouth―

I hope you get to spin inside your
               paper house.

              Emerge Noctuidae,
              owlet moth, 

              laying your eggs in leaves at night.
    
That you might finish your stitch―

Replicate yourself in time so you are
              always present―

              each egg a deposit―

              an echo-pearl of “you” along time’s string―

That my soul might be allowed
              to flourish―

Make a success
              of threading flesh, to participate 

              again in time, on 

              long arcs between sets of plunge, even though
                            it hurt―

                            to be born and die―

                            it loved to ride
                                          the point

                                          of the needle―