A Creature of Night
April 20 2021
It is said
that sunlight is the best disinfectant.
And in the light of day
you feel the spotlight
of inquisitive eyes,
no skulking in the dark
no sense of impunity.
The soil warms
and air expands
and soaring birds take flight,
rising on thermals
as they lazily circle
peering down at earth.
Plants drink it in
gorging greedily.
A dog sleeps
sprawled-out in the heat,
the slow rise and fall of its chest
the single sign of life.
But I am a creature of night
so am I unclean?
Am I lazy
debauched
a furtive stalker?
Or am I simply seeking solitude,
the respectful quiet
and comforting cloak of dark,
the cool temperate air
that sits so heavily
it hardly stirs?
There are nocturnal birds
with large forward-facing eyes
noise-cancelling feathers
and short powerful wings,
suited for low-level flight
between the trees.
Nocturnal hunters
who depend on sound and scent.
And even night-blooming flowers
that unfurl at dusk,
reflecting
what little light there is,
perfuming the air
even more heavily
than their diurnal counterparts.
Not an underworld
of filth and disease,
but an alternate world
of subtle beauty
and high alert,
where less is more
and every sense is at work.
I often walk in the dark,
depending on starlight
or a sliver of moon.
On familiar landmarks
and well-worn paths,
the sharpness of eye
one eventually learns.
But no artificial light for me,
disturbing the balance
of predator and prey,
of innocents asleep
and the vigilant awake.
The sounds after dark
of which you are only aware
when that bloodless light washes everything out,
blinking
in its desecrating glare.
When the switch is flicked
and silence instantly falls;
the chorusing frogs stifled,
the calling birds
abruptly gone.
I was scrolling through a magazine on my iPad and a line caught my eye. In retracing my steps, I think it may have been this, the title of a poem by Jose Antonio Rodriguez that appeared on the New Yorker web-site: In The Presence of Sunlight ( https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/26/in-the-presence-of-sunlight ). It must have brought to mind the aphorism “sunlight is the best disinfectant”, and I immediately felt compelled to riff on that.
So, very unusually, this poem was actually written directly on my iPad, reclining in my easy chair; rather than my usual routine of sitting in an office chair at a big butcher-block table in front of my laptop. (Prior to that, it used to be blank white paper with a cheap Bic pen. Things change; even me!)
There is literal truth to this saying. In the Crimean Wart, one of Florence Nightingale's innovations was windows and airy wards (along with basic cleanliness and proper plumbing!) There was then, of course, the miasma theory of disease that predated our knowledge of germs – the idea that infectious disease was spread by bad odours -- so this made sense. It was also an important part of flu prevention and treatment in the pandemic of 1918, when windows were left open in school and classes were conducted outdoors when possible; as well as a driving force in the movement to clean up and clear urban tenements around the turn of the last century. TB wards, in the pre-antibiotic era, featured clean air, good ventilation, and spacious grounds. It's true today, in the time of Covid: UV light does sanitize; there is far less chance of acquiring the infection in outdoor air.
I am a very nocturnal, so it seems inevitable that the poem would have turned in that direction. Which is where this idea of laziness and debauchery come in. Because for people who don't know, there is something degenerate about denizens of the night. We rise late (ignoring the fact that we sleep the same), so we must be lazy; and we carry on under cover of darkness, so surely we're up to no good.
I often walk after dark, in the woods. There is lots happening, but it's subtle. There are plants and creatures fully adapted to night: a parallel world that does not intersect with day. I love the peace and relative quiet, but my senses are sharpened. My presence intrudes. Harsh electric light feels like a desecration. Not only that, but can actually be painful to night adjusted eyes! There are steady background sounds we don't notice until they're suddenly gone. The rumble of a fridge is a good example. Your ear quickly habituates, and you stop hearing it. But in that sudden void of silence in the room when it stops, it's the opposite: the silence itself sounds loud!
Of course, this is a poem about night out in the woods. A city poem would be very different. Night there would probably be populated by more questionable characters, and all the observations of wildlife would hardly apply. But I don't do nightlife in the city. I'm a homebody and country mouse, so that's what I know.
I'm a bit torn about my choice in this line: of which you only become aware. I dislike using “which” in poetry: it seems so prosaically expositional, like the logical step-by-step explanation a scientist would use. But the alternative is you only become aware of, and this is a case where the discredited “rule” about ending a sentence/line with a preposition is useful: it's a weak word to finish on, and I really wanted to save that place for “aware”. I could also have written you only notice (which is what I did write, first time), but there was something about the short length of that line that my ear disliked. My self-imposed injunction against a preposition ending a line is hardly inviolable, as is perfectly demonstrated 2 lines down, when I write washes everything out. Here, “out” is strong. In a sense, it’s the action word. So it’s very useful to give it the slight extra emphasis that closing a line confers.
When I left off the poem and began writing this commentary, the line ending the 2nd last stanza was in its penetrating glare. But when I came up with “desecration” here, I liked the word so much I went back and changed the poem!
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